Blinded by Light
by HereAfter
Summary: Michi Kuroki would give anything to close her territory, to cut off her link to the Loom of Life, a tapestry of brilliant emotion and feeling and connection that colors every soul she meets. So when she encounters the beguiling Shuichi Minamino and his muted Loom, she's captivated. But like so much else since her territory thrust her into the occult, is he not what he seems?
1. Into the Viridian

One block north of Mushiyori University's campus, the subway stop at Nako Square bustled beneath the warm glow of the streetlights. Hugging her light jacket tighter, Michi Kuroki paused under the golden halo of a lamp and eyed the escalator down into the subway's cramped tunnel. The creeping tendrils of a headache had begun to worm out from her temples, and she rocked her weight from heel to heel, willing all the colors and noise and saturation of the busy square to leave her be just for a moment—just for a single breath.

At her elbow, hunched against a stiff fall breeze, Runa Ito heaved her messenger bag higher up her shoulder. "You sure you can't make it tonight, Michi?"

"Sorry. Professor Endo assigned three chapters of reading for Friday's class."

"Three?" Runa rolled her eyes. Red threads of annoyance glimmered around her, highlighting her sharp cheekbones and gleaming against her pale skin, invisible to all but Michi. "Don't these old men know we have lives? Slave drivers, the lot of them."

Michi managed a tight laugh. "Endo's not so bad. And he definitely isn't old."

Far from it.

In fact, two weeks ago, when she'd taken her seat in the cozy lecture hall in Mushiyori University's ancient social sciences building for the only night class of her junior year, she'd thought the handsome brunette leaning against the lectern must be a student. Maybe a TA if she were being generous. Definitely not the professor meant to teach Psychology of Emotion and Motivation.

Even when he'd introduced himself, she'd remained half-convinced he was nothing more than a wise-cracking senior willing to impersonate a professor just to earn a few laughs.

"Well, we'll miss you." Looping her thumb around her bag's strap, Runa turned and walked backward. The finest threads of magenta wove themselves through her red. Disappointment. In Michi. "Text me if you change your mind."

Fishing her headphones from her jacket pocket, Michi nodded. "Not going to happen. Not tonight. But tell Nanako and Yurie hi for me."

Runa snapped a salute. "Will do."

In moments, she disappeared into the crowd, swallowed up by the mixed sea of businessmen in sharp suits and the harried students hurrying off campus. Still, Michi hesitated a heartbeat longer, staring after Runa's dark ponytail. Goodness, she missed the girls. Just two weeks into classes, and the summer holiday already felt like it happened months ago.

And now she was disappointing them. The sting of that hurt—no matter how many times she'd felt it before. Not that it was Runa's fault. Like nearly everyone in Michi's life, Runa had no idea Michi could read her emotions as soon as they arose.

Nor did Runa know of the crippling headaches the threads of emotion brought with them. As far as Runa was concerned, Michi was still seeing a doctor for the migraines that had plagued her for five years now. She remained utterly unaware of the cursed tunnel to Demon World that had opened and gifted Michi with a psychic territory she had no use for.

Drawing a deep breath into her lungs, Michi closed her eyes and blocked out not just the milling pedestrians but the tapestry of threads woven all around her—an embroidery in so many brilliant shades of emotion and feeling and connection that it left an afterimage against her eyes, as bright as if she'd stared at the sun. The Loom of Life.

With deliberate slowness, she fit her headphones into her ears and stuffed her hands into her pockets, then faced the subway's escalators. She could do this. The subway was a tangled knot of threads so overwhelming that the migraines it sometimes left her with would keep her bedridden for hours after, but it was also the only way home.

And it was her hellish teacher's assignment. _Ride the subway. Practice reading the Loom._

Bracing a hand against the escalator's moving banister to keep steady, she stepped aboard and let it carry her down, deep into the musty tunnel. Commuters packed the platform below, bunched together between the thick support pillars stretching to the ceiling.

Eyes locked on the ground, Michi slipped through the crowd, dodging elbows and wriggling around a clump of high school students in purple uniforms until she reached the yellow safety line at the platform's edge. There she waited, tapping a booted toe against the yellow paint and staring into the tunnel's dark maw.

A sign overhead indicated the next inbound train's arrival was imminent, and sure enough, the railcar came rattling out of the darkness, passengers packed within. It ground to a halt, one set of doors directly before her. Just as she'd planned. She'd needed only three days to learn exactly where the operators stopped the first car, and now it was only too easy to predict where the doors would align.

As they clattered open, allowing a stream of commuters to file outward, she kept a tight grip on her schoolbag, and once the last passenger disembarked, she darted through the doorway. Three open seats awaited her. She picked the closest, sliding into the worn plastic beside a young man. His head was dipped over a book, long strands of red hair spilling over his shoulder, but as she shrugged off her bag and eased it between her feet, winding one heeled boot through its strap as an added precaution, he glanced up and offered a polite smile.

His eyes were the most stunning viridian she'd ever seen.

Quick as he'd looked up, his attention returned to his reading. It took all her self-control not to stare at the side of his lean, handsome face.

Her brutish instructor's voice came back to her. _Pick a single target. Focus on their strands. Read their Loom._

In the tight confines of the train, it was a task easier barked than done, but Michi forced herself to relax. The only way to master her territory was to practice. Endlessly. After all, five years in, she still felt helpless in crowds like this.

Ignoring her building headache, she focused on her seat partner, letting her psychic eye tease his threads from the knotted tangle pulsing around her. Or, at least, so she tried.

His Loom evaded her as no person's ever had before. Normally she could hardly keep from seeing someone's emotions woven across their skin in jewel bright tones. Yet his slipped away from her, as if slicked with oil or hidden beneath a veil.

She bit her chapped bottom lip, sneaking a sideways peek at him. Only then, as she took in the defined cut of his jaw, did his threads flicker into being. Muted grays and yellows. Almost the storm silver of exhaustion. Nearly the goldenrod of discomfort. But not properly either.

Again, she felt the sensation that his Loom was hidden from her, as though at a distance or through warped glass.

Never had someone defied her territory like he did.

When the train rattled to a halt six stops later and he made to stand, she was so mired in her confusion she forgot to shift out of his way. In the end, it took the soft tenor of his voice—his actual words indiscernible over the tinny clamor of her headphones—to startle her into motion.

Blushing, she mumbled an apology and scooted her knees aside to let him pass. He flashed another brief smile, the barest glimmer of what she thought might be cobalt amusement flickering through his threads, and then he was gone, swept out with the departing crowd, leaving her alone. Frazzled and shaken. So much so that when the railcar thundered into her stop five minutes later, she nearly forgot to disembark.

As it turned out, she might as well have spent the night with Runa and the girls, because after that handsome, unreadable stranger, she certainly didn't get any psychology reading done. Not a single page.

* * *

On Thursdays, her classes ended before noon, and she was home long before rush hour, tucked safely within her cozy apartment, cut off from the Loom of Life by the psychic wards she'd plastered on the walls. She tried not to spend the day thinking of him—that redheaded stranger—but he flitted into her thoughts, his quiet smile and muted threads distracting her from the essay assigned for Nordic Literature.

How had he done it? Why couldn't she see his Loom like she could everyone else's?

By Friday night, as she and Runa trekked to the subway stop in Nako Square, those questions had begun rattling around in her head so insistently that for once she didn't entirely dread her ride home. If he were there, commuting as he had been Wednesday, maybe she'd be able to work out how to see his Loom.

It was a big maybe.

Still, after she bid Runa goodbye, she didn't linger to see her friend off, instead loping down the escalator, bumping her way past a stream of professionals in well-fitted suits. The redhead had worn charcoal slacks and an unadorned dress shirt beneath a brown leather jacket. Too elegant for a fellow Mushiyori University student. Which meant he likely worked in the district.

With any luck, he'd be riding the same train as before.

The crowd on the platform was more agitated than usual. A forecasted rainstorm had instilled the rotted mustard yellow of anxiety through the commuters' Looms. It seemed fitting. After all, though Michi couldn't see her own threads, she didn't need her territory to identify the unease coiling in her chest.

She hoped he was here.

She wasn't quite sure what she'd do if he weren't. Put up search posters with a rendering of his stunning face? Hire a private investigator? Ask the ornery demon Hiei to hunt him down?

Despite the nerves jangling within her, she couldn't help a laugh at that last option. As if the demon would ever do her such a favor. She imagined he'd sooner gut her on that dreadful sword of his.

In the end, she needn't have worried about drawing up search parties.

The redhead sat one row back from where she'd last seen him, his head dipped forward—reading, no doubt. To her immense relief, the seat beside his was unoccupied.

Just as she had Wednesday, she wore her headphones, but this time, when he raised his head to smile, she dragged one free of her ear. At the sight of her, recognition dawned in his enigmatic eyes. She seized on a courage she could hardly recognize as her own and offered an answering grin, little more than a quick tilt of her lips.

"Evening," he said, his voice warm as melted chocolate.

Her toes curled inside her leather boots. "Sorry for not getting out of your way more quickly. On Wednesday, I mean." A flush warmed her cheeks, and she dropped her gaze to her hands, twining her fingers into a series of knots. "Promise it won't happen again."

His chuckle put his voice's beauty to shame. "Hardly an offense worth an apology."

She snuck another glance at him. "And yet an offense?"

Same as last time, she couldn't be quite sure if the fresh rush of color in his threads was cobalt amusement or something else. Maybe the teal of happiness? It was hard to say, but his bout of renewed laughter confirmed it was hardly something horrid.

"A poor choice of words perhaps."

All around them, the Loom glinted, a weave of rainbow colors that awoke the first twinges of a headache behind her eyes, yet he remained nearly unreadable, his threads dulled almost beyond comprehension. If she weren't focused, she might not have seen them at all.

And again, it begged the question: how was he doing it? If he was doing it on purpose at all…

It was a hardly an inquiry she could pose to him. _Stranger, why can't I see your Loom?_ He'd think her unhinged. Utterly deranged. She didn't want that—not least because his smiles had proved enthralling, and she imagined he wouldn't spare many for the crazed girl stalking him in the subway.

Instead of questions, she offered her name. "Nice to meet you. I'm Michi. Michi Kuroki."

His brows rose, and his threads rippled with a green she couldn't easily name. Washed out as his Loom was, it was hard to say if it was the emerald shine of curiosity or the lime shade of surprise. Between the two, she'd guess the latter. After all, her forwardness had shocked her, too.

He dipped his chin in polite greeting. "Shuichi Minamino." When he offered a hand for her to shake, his fingers long and lean, she noticed he'd closed the book in his lap. "A pleasure to meet you, Michi."

She blushed anew, fumbling for a response as his hand closed around hers, warm and supple as fine leather, but before words returned to her, the railcar ground to a standstill. He rose, his book in one hand, her fingers still held in the other. How had they reached his stop already?

"Have a lovely night," he murmured, the words nearly swallowed up in the crush of movement as passengers departed the train.

She swung her knees to the side. Releasing her hand with a gentle parting squeeze, he eased past and broke for the doors. She stared after him, and as the subway car lurched back into motion, she watched him out the window, his red hair a beacon amongst an ocean of dark heads.

At the last moment, as the tunnel walls closed in, swallowing her up, he turned back.

This time she could've sworn his threads were emerald.

Same as his eyes.

* * *

Michi wasn't due to see her mentor for three more weeks, and thanks to Genkai's stubborn refusal to put a landline in her temple and the absolutely abysmal cell signal out in the mountains, Michi had no way to contact the psychic about the mysterious Shuichi. She had a million questions to ask the grouchy woman. Was Shuichi a sign of her territory fading away? Could the muted effect of his Loom be replicated? Had she at last stumbled upon a way to be free of her unwanted powers?

But a trip to the mountain shrine was a haul she couldn't rationalize, not when the assigned homework load for her fall classes kept her awake until midnight each day, pouring over textbooks and analyzing old psychology clinical trials. More and more, it seemed Professor Endo was precisely the slave driver Runa had accused him of being, and with a dozen assignments looming, she didn't even have time for her volunteer work, let alone trekking out to see Genkai on a whim.

Which meant it was up to her to work out Shuichi's secrets.

Hoping he would be there on her ride home each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday became the sole focus of her walk from campus with Runa, and she knew she was doing her friend a disservice with her distracted half-answers as they parted ways every night, but the mystifying quandary Shuichi presented drew her inexorably. Not even the ever-present magenta of Runa's disappointment could detract from Michi's need to work out the redhead's secrets.

The seat beside him was almost always empty. How he managed that she hadn't yet ascertained. Perhaps he traveled with a friend who departed at the Nako Square stop each evening.

He made for pleasant—if quiet—company. With her attention focused on his dim threads, she could almost forget the rest of the tangled Loom occupying the railcar's tight innards, and though they rarely made conversation, an affection for the calm he offered grew in her unbidden.

On their fifth encounter, a week after she introduced herself, she boarded the car and found him waiting, his book already closed in his lap, his head up and emerald eyes alert. The curl of his smile sent a shiver down her spine, and it nestled at the hollow of her back, a fluttering nervousness taking root in her chest as she settled beside him.

"Evening, Michi," he said as she stuffed her headphones into her pocket. He spoke her name with a careful precision—as if it were some precious spell and mispronouncing it even a hair might have disastrous consequences. "How are you on this unseasonably chilly night?"

Surprised at the warmth in his tone, she wiggled her fingers at him from within a knitted mitten. "Caught thoroughly off guard. Luckily I found these stuffed in my bag as I was leaving campus. You?"

"I'm well." He tilted his head a degree, his long locks tumbling over his shoulder. The twinkling of his eyes confirmed the curiosity twining through his Loom. "By campus, do you happen to mean Mushiyori University? Are you a student there?"

Oh…

She hadn't meant to give such details away. Other than exchanging names and soft smiles, they'd hardly spoken before tonight, yet here she was revealing where she attended school to a near stranger. If Nanako were here, she wouldn't hesitate to declare this the beginning of Michi's undoing. If Michi ended up dead in a gutter, her demise could be traced back to this exact moment of imprudence—or so Nanako would be presume.

Michi stamped out a giggle at her imaginary Nanako's displeasure. Goodness knew the last thing she needed was to start laughing at nothing. If she did, Shuichi would no doubt think her just as unbalanced as if she started prattling on about Looms and threads and psychic territories.

At her uncertain pause, his smile reemerged and he added, "I graduated last spring. I miss it. Though perhaps not the evening classes."

To her make-believe Nanako's immense distress, that seemed to be all it took to unstopper her tongue. "You have that all wrong. Morning classes—of which I have far too many—are the real bane of a college student's existence."

He hid a laugh behind a graceful hand, and she ran through a quick bout of math. If he'd graduated after the last school year, that made him what? Twenty-one? Twenty-two?

She'd certainly never seen him around campus before—one wouldn't forget hair or eyes as breathtaking as his. Nor had she passed him on the trains, though she'd lived with her cousin Asato the last two years, and the best route to their shared apartment had been on the subway line picked up at the opposite end of campus, not the one at Nako Square. Perhaps they had simply never crossed paths.

The dull blue she'd begun to recognize as his substitute for amusement glimmered in his threads. "Ah, morning classes. That must be why I don't see you on Tuesdays and Thursdays."

"You've figured me out."

As the railcar lurched into a station and the doors sprung open with a beep, she realized they'd run out of time. Somehow the train had already reached his stop.

He stood fluidly, his book cradled in the crook of his arm, a briefcase slung over the same shoulder. "A shame," he said as she turned sideways, creating space for him to pass. "My seat partners those days aren't nearly so charming."

His parting wink left her breathless.

* * *

Their interactions changed after that, light conversation filling their brief time together on the train. Shuichi asked innocuous questions, his eyes lit with a mirth that set butterflies loose within her chest.

 _What's always playing in those headphones of yours?_ Classical. Movie scores. Wordless noise to block out the subway's commotion. _It is hectic, isn't it?_

Oh, if only he knew.

But she kept that secret to herself.

 _Any particularly good classes on your docket this semester?_ The Psychology of Emotion and Motivation. Neuroscience. Nordic Literature and Its Intersection with Modern Video Games. That last one had baffled him, and true emerald—clear and bright—shot through his threads. It seemed his Loom was capable of regular color if he felt an emotion strongly enough.

But for all his inquiries into her life, he gave her no room to pose questions in return. Always he seemed ready with his next query, listening raptly and yet poised to move the conversation forward at every turn.

Not that she would have known what precisely to ask him. Where he worked perhaps. What he'd majored in at Mushiyori University. Questions as equally inane as his own, grazing the surface but not pushing any farther.

Still, as her next lesson with Genkai drew closer, promising an endless train ride out to the mountains, the need to unravel his Loom's secrets grew murkier. If she told the old psychic about Shuichi, what would that do to these simple commutes at his side? He would become an assignment, a puzzle to solve—and maybe he should have been that already, but somehow the lines had begun to blur. She enjoyed his company for his quick smiles and steady wit, but also for the oasis of calm he offered, the muted reprieve from the Loom of Life's blinding light.

She wasn't ready to give that up—to alter it in irreparable ways.

If anything, she wanted more of it.

Maybe that was why she caught his wrist as he rose to leave her the third Wednesday after their first encounter, only a handful of days before she was meant to see Genkai again. And maybe that was why, when her lips parted, the question that slid forth was utterly unbelievable.

"Shuichi, would you like to grab dinner sometime?" An instant blush scorched into her cheeks. Goodness, what was she thinking? Yet rather than take the offer back, her next words inexplicably doubled-down. "Or just see each other somewhere off this crowded train?"

There was that unnamable green again, twisting through his washed out Loom. Lime surprise? Emerald curiosity? Some indefinable mix of the two? She didn't give it too much thought, not in the face of the color woven beneath it. A mottled yellow. Impossible to fit into one of her neat categories, but a bad sign nonetheless. Yellows never boded well. Goldenrod discomfort, mustard anxiety, the buttery yellow of boredom—all bad.

Not a single one the sort of reaction a girl wanted after being so foolishly improper.

She relinquished his wrist. "I'm sorry. You don't have to answer that. Pretend I never—"

He dipped his long, slim hand into his jacket pocket. It reappeared with a business card fitted between his middle and pointer fingers. New passengers were flooding aboard, and he hurried to press the card into her aimlessly fluttering hands. Just as the doors began to close, he darted through them, but before they could seal tight, he called back over his shoulder, his eyes flashing with teasing amusement, "Text me. We'll work out a time."

* * *

AN: So a Kurama focused story… I never—NEVER—thought I'd be writing one of these. But then one day while drafting Once We've Fallen, Michi came tumbling into my head and I just knew she was destined to get tangled up with Kurama.

The idea for her threads is not mine (rather is belongs to the brilliant Susan Dennard, author of TRUTHWITCH and the other books in the ongoing Witchlands series), but I'm adapting it here as a psychic territory. I'm really looking forward to exploring it!

Michi has all sorts of ties to our beloved gang, though she doesn't realize it yet. I can't wait to start weaving together all the disparate threads of this story. Hopefully it's going to be a fun ride!

Also, I know YYH is set before the proliferation of cell phones and personal music devices and all that jazz, but I'm going to fudge the technology lines here. Forgive me?i


	2. Out of the Blue

_Text me_.

Such a simple instruction and yet so bafflingly hard to follow.

Shuichi's business card was like silk beneath Michi's fingers, his name inked across the sturdy cardstock in simple black print. Beneath it, listed in blocky lettering, waited both office and cell numbers as well as a company email address. Aligned in the card's right corner, printed in navy—the color of determination; fitting for a business—lay his employer's name. _Hatanaka Properties_.

No doubt he intended her to text his cell. That had been easy enough to work out, but as the subway car churned to her stop and she deboarded, she couldn't bring herself to pull out her phone. Anxiety twisted between her ribs, twining thorny fingers around her lungs as she ducked her head against a light rain and hurried down the three short blocks to her apartment building.

Only once she was inside, her damp jacket shucked at the door and her stocking-covered feet curled beneath her on the couch, did she at last wake her phone and key in his number. Half-convinced he'd already forgotten about her—or worse, that he regretted offering his card at all—she didn't assign a name to his contact, instead skipping straight to the messaging screen.

 _-Hi, Shuichi. Michi here.-_

She hesitated a moment, frowning at the cursor blinking after her name. The text seemed so bland, so devoid of personality, but an emoji felt shockingly out of place. Despite his easy smiles, Shuichi didn't strike her as the type for winky faces or colorful hearts.

Nor for that matter was she.

Sighing at her own absurdity, she sent the text and tossed her phone into the couch cushions. It slid into the crack, disappearing from view, and she staunchly ignored its presence, tugging her laptop from her schoolbag and pulling up the readings assigned for tomorrow's classes.

In no time, a translation of an old Nordic folktale had drawn her in, engrossing her so thoroughly that when her phone vibrated and she fished it from the cushions, she expected Runa's or Yurie's name to flash on the screen. Instead, she was met with an unnamed number.

Shuichi.

 _-I hope you've made it home safe, wherever that is.-_

She dragged in a steadying breath and shoved her rain-flattened bangs behind her ear. No mention of dinner. She tried to tell herself that didn't mean anything, but goodness, it was difficult.

 _-I have! Same to you.-_ Moment of truth. Push her luck farther? Or leave well enough alone? Sucking her bottom lip between her teeth, she carefully tapped out a question. _-I know it's soon—no worries if you can't make it—but I've a paper due Friday, and it would be awfully nice to have something to look forward to on Saturday. Dinner, maybe?-_

She hit send before she could second-guess herself.

Technically, she was spending Saturday morning at Genkai's, suffering through another useless lesson on how to master her territory, but she'd scheduled a train ticket for her return trip that would have her home in plenty of time for a dinner date. Genkai's insistence on beginning at dawn meant she was usually free by mid-afternoon and back in Mushiyori by dusk.

Thank God—or was it the gods?—for small blessings.

Her phone buzzed almost immediately.

 _-Certainly.-_

Her heartbeat stuttered. Saturday. Three days from now. So soon and yet so far. It would be just what she needed after a day spent under Genkai's exacting demands. Shuichi's dim threads would be an exquisite reprieve.

Though, glancing at her phone again, his one word message hadn't contained much in the way of details. Where to meet. When. So much still to work out.

Her phone's vibration zinged through her fingers.

 _-See you Friday, I hope. Plan the particulars then?-_

A smile crept across her lips. _-Looking forward to it.-_

* * *

Her phone rang while she was in the shower, and she let it go to voicemail. It was probably one of her parents, calling to check in. Or maybe Runa if she needed help on their Cognitive Psychology homework. In either case, the caller could wait.

But no sooner had her ringtone cut out than it started again. She peeked past the curtain, watching the phone vibrate across the counter, creeping toward the sink's basin.

Trapped in the steamy shower stall, she couldn't make out the name flashing across the screen—or, her fluttering heart whispered, perhaps the number, if Shuichi had decided to call her for some unknown reason. With that ill-formed hope in mind, she cranked off the water and hopped sopping wet onto the bathroom mat. Grabbing her towel in one hand, she jammed her cell to her ear with the other, too hasty to check the caller.

"Michi speaking—"

"Dang, Weaver. You're awfully hard to reach these days."

Ah. Cousin Asato. She should have known.

"I was showering, Shade."

 _Weaver. Shade._ Nicknames derived from the territories they possessed. Asato thought them funny, and though Michi often felt she missed half the joke, she played along. It was the least she could do for him. After all, he'd been the one to introduce her to Genkai, and as much as the old psychic was a nightmare, she'd also been the only person able to piece Michi's mind together enough to give her some semblance of normalcy after her territory manifested.

Before Genkai, Michi has spent six months in and out of hospitals and psych wards, teetering on the edge of collapse. Her parents had tried to help her, spending every spare cent they'd saved on professionals in every field of neurology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy imaginable. Though Michi hadn't known it at the time, it was no wonder all those doctors—and more than one quack—had failed.

Medical experts weren't exactly trained to diagnose, let alone develop and train, psychic territories.

It was Asato, visiting her in the hospital, who had realized the bright colors Michi now saw around every corner weren't the symptom of some malignant, as-yet undiscovered tumor, but instead the manifestation of a power Michi never could have dreamed of.

He'd returned a week later with Genkai at his side and, through a bit of trickery, convinced Michi's parents that the old woman was a highly regarded therapist—one with a knack for unraveling difficult patients. After that, it had taken three long months living at Genkai's shrine to unearth progress. Now, five years down the road, she was still only muddling through.

Shuichi was proof of that.

On the other end of the phone, Asato made a disgruntled little sound, half-snort, half-retch. "Please tell me you're not naked."

"No can do." In fact, even as she answered, she switched her phone to speaker and set about toweling off, frowning at the water pooled around her feet and soaked into her bathroom's tiny rug. "Maybe leave a message next time instead of calling straight back like it's some kind of emergency."

"But it is an emergency." A brief pause. "Okay, well not an emergency exactly. But something you'll want to know nonetheless."

"Spit it out, Shade."

"Right, well, I was at the shrine today, assisting with one of the transplants coming through the halfway house—and by the way, we could really use you. There's been a whole influx. Genkai's a bit overwhelmed—"

"I told you last month I need some time to settle into school." Swooping the wet tangles of her hair up into her towel, she grabbed her phone and padded down the hall to her bedroom. "I'll help when I can."

"And when will that be? You've had five weeks." She knew the whiny tone he'd adopted—and the pouty little frown that came with it—all too well. "I'm just trying to help you here. I don't think you want to see Genkai when she's impatient."

"Soon, okay? I can take a new transplant soon. In a week. Maybe two." She slipped into her favorite pajama bottoms, cinching the pants tight at the waist and managing to squirm her towel-crowned head through a shirt. "Now get back to what you were saying. What's the so-called emergency?"

"Oh, yeah. So anyway, Genkai told me Saturday isn't going to work for your next session. Apparently some Spirit World hijinks have come up—my words, not hers—and the temple is being used as a meeting point. I didn't really get details on the specifics, but…"

She filled in the rest. "But Genkai doesn't have time for me."

"Pretty much."

Pinching her phone between her shoulder and ear, she frowned at her reflection in the mirror next to her dresser. The bags beneath the eyes of the girl staring back weren't so bad these days. Ever since she'd run into Shuichi, she'd been sleeping better—at least on the nights she saw him.

Maybe skipping a month of Genkai's hell camp wasn't the worst thing in the world.

"I wish I knew what was happening with Spirit World," Asato added after a beat of silence. "Sounds like the old Spirit Detectives are getting together—"

"Hey," Michi interrupted. "None of that. You promised."

His heavy sigh crackled into her ear. "Come on, Weaver. Aren't you curious? Even a little bit?"

No. She wasn't. At all.

Five years ago, on her first ride out to Genkai's temple, Asato had accompanied her on the train, and he'd sketched a brief overview of the arcane world she'd found herself in. The three planes—Human, Spirit, and Demon—and all the inhabitants that came with them. He'd made vague references to a grand scheme he'd helped defeat, some crazed psychic's attempt to eliminate the protections around Human World, but even then, she hadn't wanted to know more.

And she certainly didn't now.

All she wanted—with a bone deep ache—was to be rid of her territory, once and for all. It had brought her nothing good, nothing but six terrible months under the Loom of Life's onslaught, and the years since had been little better.

She'd learned only that which she had to, the barest level of facts necessary to survive as one of Genkai's tortured pupils. Therefore, she knew that three years ago a new apparition had come into power in Demon World, and at his behest, the barrier protecting Human World had been lowered on the condition that demons wishing to live amongst humans did so in peace. And she knew, too, that Genkai had embraced this decision, turning her shrine into a demon halfway house, a transition point for brave—or foolhardy, depending on the definition—apparitions looking for a new life.

When Genkai had enlisted Michi's help assimilating demons into Human World, she hadn't thought to protest. She owed the cantankerous woman her sanity, and so it seemed a small price to pay to act as a guide for incoming apparitions.

But three years ago, Michi had only just graduated high school. She'd had a whole summer ahead of her, and an easy freshman year of college to follow. Volunteering in Genkai's integration program hadn't been so hard. Even dealing with Hiei, her irritable Demon World counterpart, responsible for saving both humans who wandered into the wrong plane and beginning an apparition's transition process, wasn't a burden.

Not so anymore.

And like all things tied to her territory, she wanted out. Sooner rather than later. Which meant she had no interest in Asato's stories about the retired Spirit Detectives he'd once worked with. She understood loosely that Hiei had been one of them, and she was more than to content to never hear another word of their existence.

A fact Asato knew all too well.

He groaned. "I wish you'd reconsider. Getting to know them might help you make sense of your territory. Or at the very least, how to balance the double lives these powers bring."

He'd never quite understood it—the way her territory weighed on her, an ever-present drain, a constant barrage of color and emotion. He could open and close his territory as will, rendering shadows meaningless or powerful at the slightest whim, but the Loom of Life had no off-switch. As Genkai put it, her territory was not a thing she'd created, but a beast she'd stumbled into.

And it stubbornly refused to let her go.

"Save your breath, Shade."

She could practically hear him rolling his eyes. "Fine. Whatever. Your loss. Anyway, Genkai said to mark your calendar for the second Saturday of November."

"Got it. I'll be there."

He grumbled what might have been a curse, before muttering, "Night, Weaver."

"Night, Shade. Love you."

The line clicked dead, her prickly cousin not deigning to respond, and she drifted back to the living room, savoring the sudden freedom ahead of her. Just one test separated her from a peaceful night with Shuichi. Settling on the couch, wrapped in a fuzzy blanket, she hugged a pillow to her chest and opened his messages.

As she read back through the texts, she wondered with an amused grin whether it was too late to get a refund on Saturday's train tickets.

* * *

Late.

She was going to be late.

Her railcar had broken down three stops south of Nako Square, and in the interminable lull before the subway workers got it operational again, the clock had ticked steadily closer to nine, each second marking one less moment she had to reach her seat in Anatomy.

On the first day of class, Professor Hanabi had been only too clear that tardies equaled absences—never mind that this was university, not high school, and the rule was utterly archaic. It would still pain her to have that mark tarnishing her name.

But as she burst from the station's exit into the sunlit street, practically hopping off the escalator as if it were about to catch fire, her phone buzzed in her bag, distracting her just long enough that she missed the walk signal and had to lurch to a halt before the final crosswalk onto campus.

That morning, she'd woken to a text from Asato. _-I'll be sending you a case next week. We need your help, so no slacking. Do it for the transplant, if not for me.-_ Still annoyed with his rude goodbye, she hadn't responded yet, and she had no doubt it was him calling, intending to pester her into acquiescing, so she paid the screen no mind as she swiped it open and stuck her cell to her ear. "What, Shade? I don't have time—"

"Michi?"

She choked on air and burst into a coughing fit, jerking the phone away from her mouth so she didn't hack directly into the microphone. Twin points of embarrassment burning high in her cheeks, she said, calm as she could, "Morning, Shuichi. Sorry, I thought you were someone else."

He chuckled, and through her phone, the pealing notes of his laughter felt so close—so intimate—that it sent a bubbling fizz down her spine. "I gathered as much."

She stumbled for words. Why had he called her? And at such an early hour? For one frazzled moment, she wondered if she'd somehow lost track of time. Was it not Thursday morning? Was she not almost late for Anatomy? By some nasty, horrible twist of the universe, had she missed their date—

"I'm sorry to do this to you," he continued, "but I'm afraid something came up on Saturday, an engagement I can't get out of. I hoped we might move our dinner. Perhaps to tomorrow?"

Oh.

Oh, goodness.

When she made no immediate reply, he cleared his throat. "Of course, if you're busy, I understand, but I thought since your exam is tomorrow afternoon, your night might be free."

At last, she found her voice again. "I am. Actually, tomorrow works perfectly." Now that a trip out to Genkai's wasn't looming, she needn't worry about waking hours before any sensible human might. No train ticket to hell was waiting for her come morning—in fact, her refund was likely processing right that moment.

The crossing signal changed, and she lurched into motion, clutching her bag close as she settled into a light jog. At this rate, she probably had only a handful of minutes to get to her seat, but she couldn't bring herself to hurry Shuichi along.

His voice floated through her phone's speaker, full of the mirth she'd come to expect from him, and she tried to picture how his threads might appear, flooded with that steely, pale blue he passed for cobalt. "Wonderful. Am I right in assuming your class ends at six?" Then before she could answer, he added, "Any idea what you might like to eat?"

Mushiyori University campus unfolded before her, and she turned down a winding path, racing past one of the freshman dorms, heading straight for the natural sciences building. "Yup, out at six. On the dot. I was thinking maybe sushi? Or ramen? Something simple. Have to keep up college student stereotypes and all that."

He laughed again—did he realize how damn sexy that sound was?—and said, "If you're willing to make the hike to Sarayashiki, thirteen stops north of your campus, I know the best ramen place for miles."

All the way to Sarayashiki for ramen? "The best place?" she asked, offering a soft giggle of her own. She'd reached her lecture hall, and she stopped at the steps, bouncing from foot to foot. "You swear it'll be worth it?"

"I'll never lead you astray."

 _I will._ Not _I would_. As if he intended there to be further chances down the line. As if he were promising her something more than just good ramen.

Ignoring the ragged beat of her heart, she answered in kind. "I'll hold you to that, Shuichi."

"I'm counting on it." The muffled crackle of movement reverberated through the speaker, followed by the clack of a keyboard. "The work day has started, I'm afraid. I'll need to leave you. But where shall I meet you tomorrow? On campus? It's a long ride, after all."

She hesitated a moment. One of her classmates rushed past, leaping off a skateboard and shoving it beneath his arm as he raced into the building. She was out of time, but she still ran through the logistics, picturing the subway route to Sarayashiki. Shuichi rode south from work to get home, and he boarded somewhere north of Nako Square, so coming to meet her would be out of his way. Chivalrous though the offer was, she couldn't bring herself to accept.

"That's all right. Let's meet there."

"Of course. I'll text you the address." She didn't need her territory to register the flirtatious charm in his voice as he said, "See you soon, Michi."

And though her jog through campus had hardly been strenuous, when she slid into her seat in the front row of Professor Hanabi's classroom with precisely one minute to spare, she was still breathless, the sound of her name on Shuichi's tongue echoing in her ears.

* * *

AN: So now we know Michi is a cousin of Asato Kido, one of the three psychics who captured Yusuke at the start of the Chapter Black Saga for those who don't remember, and she's involved in some sort of demon halfway house run by Genkai. I'll delve more deeply into that job in the next few chapters. What I can say now is this: with _Once We've Fallen_ , I explored a version of what might have happened if the Kekkai Barrier came down the wrong way. Now I'm going to play around with the opposite—how might the worlds look without a barrier between them?

Next chapter we get Michi's date with Kurama, not that she realizes a stitch about who he is (and is it a date in his eyes?), and I get to introduce a certain ramen stand owner. Needless to say, I'm excited to post!

Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed (and faved or added to their alerts) last chapter. I was absolutely floored by the reception. Thank you, thank you, thank you to o-dragon, E.V. Delacy, Zayren Heart, nevvy, La Femme Absurde, ClaireShepardHKKY (!), Star Charter, ahyeon, and Antiqua-hime17! Y'all are the best!


	3. Living in Lilac

"Don't you have an exam today?"

Fiddling with the baubles on her bracelet, Michi nodded. Her curls, styled to careful perfection, tumbled over her shoulders, wisps catching in a breeze billowing across campus. "In Professor Endo's class."

"So where's your good luck sweater?" Runa's brows crooked together, emerald curiosity and mint suspicion twining through her threads. Snagging Michi's wrist in one hand, she planted the other on her hip and lurched to a halt on the sun-dappled walkway. "You've been wearing that rag since freshman year of _high school_. There's no way you up and forgot it."

"I—" Michi fumbled, frowning at the sleeves of her leather jacket, suddenly as surprised as Runa. Where _was_ her sweater? An hour ago, as she'd rifled through her closet, her imminent exam hadn't even occurred to her, let alone the silly superstition she'd followed for seven years' worth of tests. She'd been too focused on the winged creatures beating against her ribs, buffeting her heart around her chest like a volleyball over a net, and when she'd at last settled on an lavender dress that complemented the gray in her eyes and zipped up her favorite boots, she'd been too behind schedule to rethink her choice.

"Holy shit." Runa's threads flickered, lime surprise flashing bright before mint returned in full, blooming across her Loom in brilliant swathes. "You did forget! Holy fucking shit."

Michi winced. "Runa, please—"

"Oh hell no. If there was ever a time for cursing, it's fucking now." Runa rose onto her tiptoes until her nose nearly grazed Michi's. "Why'd you forget your sweater, Kuroki? And why are you so dressed up?" A ripple of navy cut through Runa's sea of green, her signature determination showing in her narrowed eyes. "This has something to do with that guy on the subway, doesn't it?"

Michi pulled free. "You're going to make us late."

Though she flapped a dismissive hand, Runa relented, marching for the social sciences building like some misbegotten robot solider. "It is subway guy, isn't it?"

Michi should've known mentioning Shuichi to the girls last week was a mistake. Runa's memory was a steel trap. Once information went in, it never left. Now, there was no escaping the truth, but maybe—just maybe—she could convince Runa to keep the secret, at least for a little while. After all, if there was one thing Runa loved most in the world, it was being in on a good secret.

"I asked him to get dinner."

"Dude."

"What?"

They'd reached their lecture hall, and Runa paused at the door, one hand on the wrought iron handle. " _You_ asked _him_."

"There's nothing wrong with a girl asking a guy out. You of all people—"

Runa rolled her eyes and shoved the door open. "Oh, shove off, Michi. Of course there's nothing wrong with it. But _you_ asked him. You, Michi Kuroki, recluse extraordinaire, asked out some stranger from the subway. I'd fear the world was ending if I didn't know any better."

Sighing, Michi veered left into their class and led the way down the steps. She chose a row at the front and pitched her voice low as she nabbed a seat. "Don't tell Nanako. Please. She'll obsess over whether he's a murderer or a thug or a million other absurd things."

Runa snorted and leaned back in her chair, a lazy grin curling her lips, cobalt threads of amusement dancing along her sharp cheekbones. She slapped her phone down atop her knee. "Too late. Already texted her. _And_ Yurie."

Well.

So much for secrets.

* * *

The subway station in Sarayashiki emerged into a quiet street lined with trees, their leaves gone crimson as fall enveloped the city. Only a handful of passengers had disembarked with Michi, and she drifted on their heels into the gathering night, trying desperately to keep her grip on her bag's strap relaxed as she scanned the road.

Shuichi had texted while she'd been on the train. _-Be there in two.-_ Simple. To the point. And, if the timestamp was to be believed, sent seven minutes ago. Which meant he was here. Somewhere—

She spotted him a dozen feet to her right, leaning against a lamppost, his phone in hand, his thumb skimming across the screen. His bangs stirred across his forehead, dancing before the wind, and the collar of his navy shirt fluttered in turn. As always, his Loom was muted, nearly invisible at this distance.

The winged creatures from this morning returned, tossing themselves against her ribs like battering rams. Deftly, urging her hands to steady, she looped up her headphones and slipped them into her bag with her phone, then crossed to him.

"Hey."

His gaze flitted up. At the sight of her, he straightened, his phone disappearing into his pocket. "Evening, Michi."

The hawks in her gut morphed into veritable dragons.

"I hope you weren't waiting long."

"Only a moment." He stepped away from the streetlight, and it was as natural as breathing to fall into step at his side, following him down the block to a busier thoroughfare. "Your ride was smooth?"

Had it been? She wasn't sure. It had seemed torturously slow, the railcar overstaying its welcome in station after station and traversing the tracks in between with the slowness of cool molasses, but perhaps that had only been in her head. After all, she'd kept her gaze locked beyond the train's filmy windows, her music blaring, firmly blocking out the tangled Looms packed within the cramped space—anything to avoid one of her thread-induced headaches.

And regardless, whining about her commute was hardly the note on which she wished to start tonight.

"As smooth as the subway ever is," she answered, peeking at him sidelong. His briefcase was missing today, perhaps left back at his office, and he walked with his hands in the pockets of the brown leather jacket he'd worn when they first met—an uncomfortably close match for her own.

She hoped he didn't think she'd planned it.

"It can be quite dreadful, can't it?" He slowed, splaying an open palm toward a rickety stand set up ahead. "I asked Yusuke to save us seats. They're a precious commodity."

Seats? Here?

The pads of his fingers brushed her elbow, the barest pressure urging her forward. "Appearances can be deceiving. Trust me, Yusuke's ramen can't be beat."

"And Yusuke is…"

"An old friend."

Steam wafted from the ramen stand, drifting between the flaps hanging from its stout roof, and as they reached the empty stools Shuichi had indicated, she caught sight of the young man inside. Cloaked in a weave of blinding threads, he hunched over a cutting board, his hair dark as ink, but as she took a seat, he whirled, brandishing his knife. "Hey, those are taken—" His brows arced skyward when he noticed Shuichi, lime shooting through the previous yellow of his boredom. Then he whistled and sauntered closer, bracing his elbows against the counter as his threads settled back on cobalt amusement. "Well damn, Minamino, you didn't tell me you were bringing a chick."

Shuichi cleared his throat pointedly.

"Err, right. Sorry. Name's Yusuke Urameshi." He set his knife aside, swiped his palm down his shirt, a streak of sticky onion juice left in its wake, and stuck his hand out to her. "But for a friend of Shuichi's, Yusuke will do just fine."

He paused, no doubt waiting for an introduction in return, but she'd hardly heard him, because as his fingers closed on hers and Shuichi assumed the other empty stool, she noticed what she hadn't before.

Beneath Yusuke's shock of brilliant color, threads snaked between the young men—threads like nothing she'd ever seen, their color nearly indefinable. Like silver ever so slightly tarnished, its surface gone rainbow. Or, no—like the pearly underside of a shell, a dozen swirling colors at once. Bright and brilliant and strong as corded steel. Decidedly _not_ the muted Loom she'd come to associate with Shuichi, and though she'd never encountered these threads before, their name rose in her instantly.

The Ties That Bind.

Years ago, during the long months Michi had lived in Genkai's mountain shrine, still suffering beneath debilitating headaches, the old psychic had described the Ties to her, insisting that understanding all aspects of her new territory was the only way to combat it.

Per Genkai's research, the Loom of Life had always existed, its complex weave giving rise to every living being in the worlds. And as with almost all things, it had been studied, psychics from centuries past dedicating their whole lives to learning its intricacies. Most spent years honing the skill needed to perceive even the brightest of threads, and they'd left records of the colors they observed, a guide that Michi had once depended on—though in time her own lexicon of shades had far outpaced theirs.

More importantly, the most talented had left stories of threads different from the simple Looms all people wore like a second skin. Those myths told of links between souls, bonds so powerful that threads stretched between separate Looms, twining into a joint tapestry—forming something _greater_.

But Michi had never witnessed those links, and even Genkai had admitted they seemed more a myth than a reality. More than once, she'd seemed to scoff at some private joke, muttering about fools and their red strings of fate.

Yet now, with her hand still trapped in Yusuke's far larger one, his calloused fingers pressed against her knuckles, there was no denying the pearlescent strings stretching from him to Shuichi. They weren't red, but they were the Ties. Without a doubt.

Another anomaly to Shuichi's credit.

* * *

She needed a name for it, this bond between Shuichi and Yusuke.

It was ever-present, visible not just in the Ties stretching between their souls, but in the very way they existed—in the looks they exchanged, in Shuichi's dry chuckles and Yusuke's rolling, belly-deep laughter, in the history that ran between them like finely spun silk.

Ties that deep— _love_ that deep—needed a proper title.

But keeping pace with Yusuke's wisecracks and Shuichi's dry wit felt like sprinting a marathon, and as Yusuke served them two steaming bowls of ramen and slapped chopsticks onto the counter, she was too overcome by the broth's savory scent to worry too much about naming the intricate connection that linked them.

She breathed the steam deep into her lungs. "Smells lovely."

Yusuke shrugged, jutting a hip against the counter as if he had not a care in the world, though the grin tugging at his lips—and the ice blue pride in his Loom—betrayed his attempted nonchalance. "Compliments aren't going to distract me!" he declared, jabbing a long finger her way. "Did I really hear you say you play video games as homework? There's no way that's true."

"I do, I swear. For my Nordic Literature class." A sideways glance revealed Shuichi listening aptly, his gaze unreadable, his threads grayscale next to Yusuke's. Where Shuichi was woven of string gone muted like sun-bleached silk, Yusuke was electric, his threads near neon in their vibrancy, as if he was too _alive_ for his own skin. She wasn't sure who unsettled her territory more.

Willing a headache to remain at bay, she diverted her gaze to the pockmarked countertop, tracking the nicks and scratches engraved in its surface. "Of course, we aren't _just_ playing Skyrim. We read Nordic translations, too, and discuss the relationship between historical texts and modern video games through the lens of—"

"Yuck," Yusuke interrupted, his nose crinkled in disgust she would've thought feigned if not for the goldenrod coloring his threads, the yellow so blinding she nearly laughed at his discomfort. "You ruined it. I can't believe I was actually jealous of someone in school for a second. Gross."

"Best not let Keiko catch wind of that weakness," Shuichi advised. The wink he snuck Michi's way set her toes curling in her boots. "She might try wrangling you into earning your high school diploma again."

Shuddering, Yusuke whirled back to his cooking station. "Don't put that evil on me, Minamino," he snapped and grabbed his knife, starting on the ramen ordered by the man seated to Shuichi's right with panicked intensity.

In the ensuing quiet, Shuichi shifted to face Michi head on, his chopsticks lying forgotten atop his bowl. Dusk had long since swallowed the ramen stand, and in the light of a distant streetlamp, he was virtually ethereal. "I'd never have guessed Mushiyori University offered such an… eclectic class."

Hugging her jacket tighter against the evening's brisk chill, she propped an elbow against the counter and angled toward him. With Yusuke out of sight, she could almost ignore the Ties woven between them, could almost pretend she couldn't see any threads at all.

"Right? When I saw it in the course offerings, I enlisted just to see what it actually _was._ " And what a delight the lectures had proven to be. A much-needed break from the onslaught of psychology and biology classes she'd slated for herself, part of her never-ending quest to unravel her territory once and for all. Though in truth, if Genkai couldn't determine a means to severe her connection to the Loom of Life, she doubted any number of anatomy classes might.

Biting her lip, she added, "It's more philosophical than it sounds. Sometimes I leave class feeling like Professor Oishi turned the whole world upside down."

"How so?"

She folded the paper slip her chopsticks had come in between deft fingers, frowning as she worked out the proper way to explain. "A lot of what we discuss centers on how the lens of the viewer alters a story's reception. Narratives are largely personal, internalized by the reader and processed via their preconceptions and hopes and histories. Once a work leaves its creator's hands, it no longer belongs to them. Not really."

"What role do video games play in that discussion?" he asked, moving again, one leg sliding closer, his knee grazing hers so lightly it might have been incidental.

Even in the half-light, his irises were brilliantly emerald—the rich green of a leaf's underbelly or the sharp viridian of fresh cut grass. How many years had it been since she'd seen colors so clearly, so unmuddied by a dozen shades of emotion?

Goodness, he was captivating.

After a beat, she recalled her voice and stumbled into an answer, clinging to Professor Oishi's lectures like a lifeline to keep her afloat in Shuichi's vast green sea. "Video games, particularly the one we're playing, are subject to manipulation by the player. A savvy gamer can change the code—thus altering the very make-up of the game—or roleplay in a way that circumvents the creator's intentions entirely. In either case, they're radically personalizing the playing experience."

"Fascinating," Shuichi murmured.

From someone else, she might've thought the comment mocking. After all, Professor Oishi's class was nothing if not philosophical. It was all too easy to appear pretentious when she prattled on about his lectures—or so Yurie assured her. But no glimmer of insincerity echoed in Shuichi's silken voice. His posture, too, appeared genuine, his torso still inclined toward hers, his head cocked the barest degree. Even his Loom shone with faint traces of the green she'd long since decided was his equivalent of emerald curiosity.

Tucking a curl behind her ear, she thanked whatever god of fate had brought her to that empty subway seat beside his two weeks ago.

He titled his head further. "So are you majoring in literature?"

"Oh, no. Sometimes I wish I was, but I'm a psych major. What about you? What was your—"

"Oy, you two," Yusuke barked. "Eat before it's cold or get the hell off my stools."

Michi startled, only then remembering the bowl set before her and the chopsticks braced atop it. Acutely aware of the Shuichi's every movement, she dug in. "This is incredible." And truly it was. The perfect balance of salt and spice.

Occupied with his cutting board, Yusuke snorted. "Damn right it is." A second dose of icy pride threaded through his Loom.

Shuichi's answer was quieter, a gentle knocking of his knee against Michi's beneath the counter, a lingering touch of confirmation and a quick, darting smile. This time, there was no mistaking the contact as accidental.

It left her knee tingling for hours.

* * *

"You're both such nerds," Yusuke declared as he battened up his stand and shoved his keys in his pocket. Night had fallen in full an hour ago, the streets going silent, and he'd decided to pack it in after his last customer drifted away more than twenty minutes prior. "If I'd known you were going to be so _intellectual_ —" he spat the word like it made him nauseous "—I never would've saved you seats."

Shuichi's lips curled in silent mirth. "Duly noted."

Rolling his eyes, Yusuke stepped back, but when neither Michi nor Shuichi made any move to follow, he paused, glancing between them with a look that brought a blush scorching back to Michi's cheeks. "I see how it is," he said, clapping Shuichi on the shoulder. "I'm staying at Keiko's tonight, but see you tomorrow?"

It was then, as Shuichi dipped his chin in wordless agreement, a somber note flickering across his otherwise placid features, that it came to her—a name for what they were. Family not by birth, not by blood and genetics and obligation, but by choice and love.

 _Threadbrothers_. Siblings woven together by the Ties That Bind.

The perfect title.

Yusuke squeezed Shuichi's shoulder once before twisting to Michi and sweeping a flourishing bow, all exaggerated angles and swaggering chivalry. "See you, Michi. Don't let this old fox charm you too thoroughly." Then, whooping with laughter, he laced his hands behind his head and strolled into the dark, the pearly strings of the Ties That Bind trailing in his wake. Right as he was about to turn out of sight, he called back, "Get her home safe, Minamino, you hear? Or else you'll be answering to me."

Still chuckling at a joke she seemed to have missed, Yusuke disappeared, and the evening's tranquility returned in his absence. Even the once busy road at their backs was all but deserted, only the occasional car passing by. Perhaps she should have felt uneasy, sitting there in the dark, watching shadows play off the elegant planes of Shuichi's face, but no nerves jangled in her chest.

Alone with him, it was as though her territory ceased to exist. His threads were so muted, so thin and fine, she could practically will them from sight. It had been six long years since another soul had been so _quiet_. Ever since her territory manifested, a person's deepest feelings had never been more than a glance away, all the tangled intricacies of their heart writ across their Loom in vibrant color. Somehow, so gradually she hadn't even recognized the shift, she'd grown to rely on that web of emotion.

The Loom guided her. It directed her interactions at every turn. It _defined_ her. And now, looking at Shuichi, it was all but gone.

She almost missed it.

* * *

"Time got away from me tonight," Shuichi said as they emerged from the subway at Michi's stop. "I hadn't intended to keep you out so late."

Taking the lead, Michi kicked a stone off the sidewalk and watched it skitter into the street. Her apartment wasn't far off, but she dragged her feet, desperate to hold onto every last moment of this night. "Thank you for walking me all the way. I know there are hardly any trains running this late. It'll take forever for you to get home."

"I imagine I'll walk the return trip. It's not that far, truly."

Fair enough.

He'd been polite about accompanying her, leaving the door open for her to travel alone if she wished not to reveal where she lived, going so far as to rise from his seat as their railcar neared his usual station. It had been her who snagged his hand. By the time she'd realized what she'd done, he'd settled back at her side, his fingers laced through hers.

Now they walked separately, his hands safely ensconced in his jacket pockets, and she missed the press of his fingers, long and delicate, yet surprisingly rough, calloused in ways she wouldn't have guessed.

"You know," she said, hoping her voice drowned out the raging beat of her heart, "shockingly, Yusuke's ramen was even better than promised."

Shuichi pressed a hand to his heart. "Implying my word was not to be trusted?"

Down the street, an engine revved as a car pulled away from the curb. Its headlights flashed across Shuichi's lithe frame before he fell back to shadow, and maybe it was a trick of the ensuing gloom or his Loom's odd saturation, but she could've sworn she spotted strands of pale amethyst twisted amongst his threads in that heartbeat of illumination.

A purple so soft and delicate, so like the silken underbelly of a flower's petal, could only be his analog of lilac flirtation.

But the filaments were gone as quick as they'd appeared, swept away as if caught in the passing car's slipstream. What remained behind was a waxen approximation of teal. Happiness, pure and true.

Perhaps the lilac had been nothing but projection, a product of her jumping pulse and sweaty palms, a figment she'd conjured to satiate the anxiety bubbling through her veins. Perhaps. But she'd like to think not.

"Can you blame me?" she asked after a beat. "You brought me all the way to Sarayashiki for a street vendor of all things. Skepticism was only healthy."

"True." He bumped his elbow lightly against her. "It was worth the hike, was it not?"

"Well, you do have an in with the chef, so I would've thought you could pull some strings and get delivery…"

"Ah, my mistake. Next time."

Michi's heart dropped into her boots. There was no mistaking the purple now glimmering at the edge of her vision, fissuring through his threads. _Next time._

They reached the stoop of her building, and she halted, withdrawing her keys with trembling fingers. As she climbed the steps, he remained on the sidewalk, his head tipped back, appraising her apartment complex, absorbing the ancient brick and chipped paint.

Her keyring bit into palm.

"I used to live with my cousin," she murmured, "but I wanted some independence." Needed it, really. A space that was _hers_. A home that was quiet and empty and devoid of threads of any kind, even those as familiar and innocuous as Asato's. "Unfortunately, the move required some sacrifice."

"It has… character."

Despite herself, she snorted. "Oh, yes. Character in spades." Shivering, yet not ready to slip inside, she hugged her jacket tighter and leaned back against her door. "I hope you enjoy whatever it is that came up tomorrow."

His nose crinkled. "It's a reunion of sorts. With a few old friends. The invitation was unexpected, and it's not often we're able to get together. I had to accept."

"Sounds lovely."

He shrugged, a frown tugging at his lips. "I'm afraid it's more business than fun, but it will be pleasant nonetheless." His frown faded, his eyes softening. "Truly though, I appreciate your flexibility tonight. I hadn't meant to shift our evening around so last minute."

Ducking her head, she fiddled with her keys, twisting the ring until the right one settled between her fingers. "As it turns out, I had plans get cancelled for tomorrow morning. If not for that, I wouldn't have been able to make the swap. Seems the universe wanted us together today."

"Good of us not to disappoint its whims."

"It's the least we could do."

He chuckled. Cobalt, bright as the clearest sky, saturated his Loom—a rare moment of genuine color. If she was the good pupil Genkai wanted her to be, she'd try to work out why that was. A shame, then, that Shuichi had quickly become more than some arcane homework assignment.

Clearing his throat, he eased onto his back foot. "I should head home—don't want to be walking all night, do I?—but I'll see you Monday, yes?"

A blush scorched into her cheeks. "Of course."

She couldn't wait.

* * *

AN: This chapter was bizarrely hard to write. Darn Kurama and his wily ways. He's forever the bane of my writing existence. *shakes fist*

In any event, know that I have a reason to push Michi and Kurama together so soon—and rationales for both of them. It'll take a while to get there, but I think the payoff will be worth it. And now the groundwork has been laid, so we can get into the meat of this story. I'm excited! There shall be genuine plot at last!

Also, Michi's funky Nordic Literature class is based on my favorite college class. We literally played Skyrim for homework. Yay for attending an overtly nerdy university!

Big thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter. I adore hearing from you all. Shout outs to knightsqueen05, Antiqua-hime17, ahyeon, farrari, Star Charter, E.V. Delacy, and ClaireShepardHKKY. You are all beyond wonderful!

(Oh, and I've started a Tumblr! I'm hereafteryyh over there! I'd love to connect with anyone who uses Tumblr. I'm totally still learning the platform, but I'm planning on sharing bits and bobs about this story's creation and probably some mid-week teasers between chapters. Hope to see you over there!)


	4. Light Like Lime

Michi's phone buzzed late Sunday night. Vibrations sent it squirming across the couch cushion, the screen lighting up, the ringtone Yurie had programmed blaring far too loudly.

Yawning, Michi jabbed pause on her gaming controller, and on screen, her avatar froze, flames billowing from her hands, an enemy's sword one moment away from delivering a death blow. A well-timed dodge might have saved her, but she'd never have a chance of getting the timing right once she unpaused. Not that it mattered. The boss fight had been as good as lost anyway. She'd been playing too long, forty minutes of homework blurring into six hours tumbling down a rabbit hole of side quests, and her combat skills had devolved into little more than button mashing and frustration.

Nestling into her pillows, she fished her phone from the cushions. A text from Asato awaited her. _-New transplant file in your inbox. Call me.-_

That was it. No further explanation—or thanks—given. Never mind that she hadn't truly agreed to manage a new transplant case. Never mind that he was dishing out assignments ten minutes before midnight on Sunday of all days. She rolled her eyes.

Classic Asato.

Rubbing at her tired eyes, Michi dragged her laptop across her ottoman with her toes and leaned sideways to pull it into her lap. The screen took a moment to brighten, and while it woke, she slid further into the cushions, propping her head on the armrest and cradling her computer against the curve of her thighs. A few flicks of her fingers across the trackpad brought up Asato's email, the attachment opening a heartbeat later.

It was the usual fare. Half Demon World mumbo jumbo, half useful psych evaluation. Her gaze flitted over the data on her charge's class and abilities. None of that was worth retaining. Assessing threat levels was Hiei's job, not hers. If he recommended an apparition for relocation, she trusted his judgment—cynical and rough-edged though it might be.

The psychological profile was the piece relevant to her—the piece she'd study until she knew it backward and forward, until she could recite it in her sleep. Understanding her transplants' personalities and histories was key to getting them settled. The better she could anticipate their thoughts on their relocation, the easier it was to read their Looms and ease their transition.

At least in theory anyway.

Scrolling through the file, she rolled the apparition's name across her tongue. _Ryota_. In the corner of the first page, a picture had been included, though it was too grainy to make out much more than his dark features and heavy brow. By that image alone, she might've thought him some brutish creature, but his backstory revealed otherwise.

She had to parse through Hiei's rough appraisal to get there, but beneath his callous tone and snide remarks—most of which she dismissed for the prattling nonsense it truly was—she found a history as heartbreaking as any she'd encountered yet.

Four months ago, Ryota's village had been destroyed in a territory war between two clashing demon clans, his home razed to the ground, most of his family and neighbors felled in the onslaught. The border patrol had taken him in as a refugee, offering room and board on their roving fortresses in exchange for his service, and Ryota had tried to fulfill his obligations, but it had been too much for him. He was young, relatively weak, and more broken than he let on. So when Hiei made passing mention of the relocation program, Ryota had seized on the opportunity, eager to escape his history in Demon World—to start over somewhere not haunted by memories.

All of which likely meant he'd be skittish. Fearful of the unknown. The sort who'd fare better settling somewhere quiet and reclusive than in some loud, brash city apartment.

As indicated on the file's last page, Genkai had drawn the same conclusion. The home she'd slated for Ryota wasn't too far from her own mountain shrine, safely tucked away in the tiny town of Itomori miles off the beaten path, as solid a place as any for an anxious survivor to begin a new life.

And horrifically inconvenient—because, _of course_ , it was.

More classic Asato.

Seizing her phone, she pulled up his number and jabbed the call button. It rang once, twice, then connected. Her cousin's drawl reverberated in her ear. "Evening, Weaver. Read that file yet?"

"You know, this could've waited until morning."

"And yet I'm sure you've already read the whole thing. Probably twice, knowing you."

She'd skimmed it three times, not just two. And she'd read it a dozen more tomorrow. But he didn't need to know any of that. "When does Ryota come through?"

"I'm picking him up at Demon's Door Cave tomorrow evening. Then he'll spend the week at Genkai's getting acclimated. He'll be ready for relocation Saturday or Sunday, whichever is better for you."

She was supposed to spend Saturday afternoon with the girls, celebrating Nanako's birthday, and she'd intended to dedicate Sunday to knocking out some essays in advance of their due dates, but of the two, homework could be shifted around—birthdays not so much. "Sunday, then. Same routine as usual? Meet you at the train station?"

A yawn thrummed through her phone in a burst of static. "Sure thing," Asato said, his voice muffled. "I'll stay at Genkai's Saturday night and bring Ryota to you in the morning, then you can escort him to Itomori." There was the rustle of clothing and whine of a rolling chair before his keyboard started clacking. "You good with me buying your train tickets?"

"Yeah. Email me the itinerary whenever."

"Will do." He hesitated a moment before adding, "Thanks for helping out, Michi. We need the extra hands."

Sighing, she flipped her laptop shut and lurched upright. If his actions in the last fifteen minutes were classic Asato, her acquiescing was classic Michi. He knew it. She knew it. At a certain point, it wasn't worth fighting her own nature—even if her course load would make her regret it.

She swung her feet to the floor, wincing as the cold woodwork kissed her toes. "You get why I needed a break?"

"Of course. Sorry for nagging you, but you know how Genkai is. Stubborn as a damn mule."

"And just as nasty."

He laughed so hard a snort snuck through. "A nasty, stubborn, life-saving mule. Genkai in a nutshell. Anyway, isn't it way past your bedtime, Weaver? Or are you finally a big girl who stays up after midnight?"

Just like that she was rolling her eyes again, whatever bonding moment they'd been about to share going up in smoke. "Night, Shade, you ass."

"Ass? Excuse me! Did you just curse—"

Grinning, she hung up.

* * *

Michi departed the social sciences hall in a whirl of nervous energy only to end up fidgeting at the foot of the steps, waiting impatiently for Runa, her hands idly twisting and untwisting her bag's strap.

She'd spent the last ten minutes of Professor Endo's lecture checking the time and silently begging him not to run long. When he'd released them early—by all of eighty-seven precious seconds—she'd bolted from her seat too quickly to even remember that Runa probably hadn't been blessed with an equally timely escape, and sure enough, Runa was nowhere to be seen.

Which was fine, really. It's not as though they usually rushed to leave campus. She had plenty of time to reach Nako Square, plenty of time to snag a place at the front of the subway platform—plenty of time to work herself into a tizzy that most certainly wasn't warranted for only a ten minute ride with Shuichi.

Forcing her hands to still, she sank onto the bottom step and sucked down a steadying breath. Then, as she often did, she tried to picture her own Loom, imagining what tangle of colors must be woven across her skin.

The nauseating mustard yellow of anxiety without a doubt. The hunter green that accompanied fizzing anticipation. Hopefully some teal, some tinge of happiness managing to burn past her roiling unease. Probably a thread or two of crimson annoyance. The lot snaking over her emotional core, whatever feeling it was that defined her as a person.

When her territory had first manifested, the knots of color found at the center of every Loom had been inescapable, blazing like miniature, odd-colored suns embedded in the chest cavities of every soul she met. It was only after weeks under Genkai's tutelage that she'd learned to disentangle a person's threads from the emotional anchor of their being, and nowadays, she rarely noticed cores—or, at least, she did her best to block them out.

There was too much to them. Too much concentrated color. Too many strings knotted and twisted and tied into a dense ball of yarn.

Threads changed. They were dynamic. Informative. More than that, she could filter through them, find their salient meaning and put it to use.

Cores were static. Or so it seemed. If they changed in some way, it was at a scale too small for her to make out, and looking at them too directly for any length of time was like staring into an eclipse, so bright and overwhelming that it left afterimages on her vision for hours.

So she knew a person's core—she couldn't possibly miss it—but she didn't dwell on it. And yet she wondered often about her own. What defined her? What emotion lay at the root of her being? Certainly not Genkai's steely, navy determination. Nor Asato's mix of icy pride and aquamarine contentment. So what was it? Who was she?

She'd never know. Her Loom remained forever a mystery.

Perhaps it was better that way.

"Michi, hurry up! Aren't you coming?"

Startled, she tore her gaze from the back of her hands, realizing she'd been squinting at her knuckles as if focusing enough might make her threads appear, and found Runa bouncing from foot to foot, her skirt swishing about her thighs. "When did you get here?"

Runa faked checking a watch. "A year ago. Now get up. We can't have you missing your fated ride with Subway Guy."

Wincing, Michi stood and started down the path. "I told you his name."

"Yes. And 'Shuichi' is dreadfully dull. It has none of the mystique of Subway Guy. None of the charm."

"Because Subway Guy doesn't make him sound like a creepy stranger at all. Obviously."

"Obviously," Runa echoed. She wound an arm through Michi's, pushing her to speed up. "So what's the battle plan? How are you going to charm him straight out of his pants?"

"Um, I'm not."

"Well then you, Michi Kuroki, are missing out on a golden opportunity."

They'd reached the traffic light at the edge of campus, and Michi punched the button for the crosswalk, frowning pointedly at Runa and her billowing cobalt threads. "Remind me why I tell you anything. Ever."

"Because I am your guide in all things. Your mentor, if you will." Lavender affection rippled through Runa's Loom, and her sharp gaze softened. "We're sure he's not a jerk, right?"

The light changed, the walk signal coming alive, and Michi tugged Runa into motion. The subway entrance waited on the far side of the street, bustling as always with university students and professionals in equal measure. "Can you ever be sure someone's not a jerk?"

Runa tapped her lip, staring pensively into the sky. "Well, I'm not a jerk. You know that."

"I mean…"

Laughing, Runa jabbed an elbow into Michi's side, then tugged her to the side of the station's open doors, safely out of the flow of traffic. "You think he'll ask _you_ out this time?"

"I don't know." She slipped her arm from Runa's. "It's okay if he doesn't. I'll be happy just seeing him." Him and his beautifully pale Loom.

"You're not getting in his pants with that mentality. Now go." Runa pushed her lightly toward the escalator leading into the subway's depths, her threads awash in lavender and emerald. "Don't miss his train. And text me later. I need to know everything."

Still grinning, Runa turned and wove into the crowd, trekking for her apartment, and Michi watched her dark ponytail until it disappeared amongst the sea of commuters, then ducked into the subway. Skilled maneuvering brought her to the front of the crowd, and when the railcar rattled into the station two minutes later, she was the first aboard.

As promised, Shuichi was waiting.

* * *

The autumn chill had settled over campus in full by Wednesday, a light rain falling throughout the afternoon, and Michi killed the hour between her classes in the library, curled up in one of the plush armchairs on the second floor, her notes for Nordic Literature in hand. Ten minutes before she planned to pack up, her phone buzzed in her bag, earning her scornful glares from a couple ensconced on a couch nearby.

Though their devote worship of each other's faces had hardly been more polite than a phone she couldn't control, she muttered an apology and scooped up her things, darting for the nearest bathroom before picking up.

"Shade?" she said, frowning at her reflection in the mirror. "You know I'm—"

"At school. Yup, fully aware. But it's urgent, Weaver. Like actual urgent."

Her reflection's brows rose. "What's going on?"

"Taki is— Hell, how do I even start this?"

Michi's heartbeat kicked up a notch, her eyebrows climbing even higher. Taki had been her first transplant. A gentle giant if that cliché was ever actually worth using. He was a stoneskin, or so his paperwork identified him, and he'd shown her once how he could turn his whole body to coarse, sturdy rock, as if he'd been carved straight from granite. A nifty ability, but not a dangerous one. Genkai had deemed him the perfect test run for Michi's role with the halfway house.

His transition had been over two years ago. She'd checked in on him regularly since, though not in the last handful of months. He was hardly the sort of creature who should've had Asato calling her in a panicked fit.

She leaned a hip against the counter, trying to shake off the restlessness coiling in her gut. "The beginning is usually good as far as starts go."

"Funny, Weaver."

"I'm not trying to be."

He heaved a sigh. "Okay, right. The beginning. Taki got in touch last Thursday—"

"With you? Not me?"

The phone crackled as if Asato's reception was spotty as he answered, "No, not me. With Genkai. He used his emergency communicator. Told her he'd been feeling off for a few days now. Angry. Like, unnaturally so. And he couldn't spot the cause."

Not once in two years had Michi seen Taki angry. Not once in the long, vexing process of learning an entirely new world and means of living had he shown even a flicker of temper. If ever there'd been a demon meant to prove the whole lot weren't as harsh and irritable as Hiei, it had been Taki.

She dug her nails into her palm. "I… don't get it."

"Neither did we. Genkai told him to sleep it off. Reach out if it persisted. And, well, she didn't hear from him, so she— _we_ —assumed that was the end of it."

"But it wasn't."

"Apparently not." He barked a sudden curse, and the blare of a car horn echoed distantly. "Bastard cut me off."

"Where are you, Asato?"

"Driving back from Genkai's. I brought Ryota out there Monday like we talked about—used my car so he wouldn't be subjected to the crowds in a train—and decided to stay the week. Figured I could help with whatever Genkai's got going on."

All too aware of where this conversation was headed, Michi pulled on her raincoat, hiked her bag over her shoulder, and started for the door. She cut for the back stairs, keeping her voice hushed as she said, "You wanted to figure out what brought the Spirit Detectives back together."

He groaned. "Look, I'm not going to deny it, but you can give me shit about that another time. Right now, we need to focus on Taki."

"Why?" She reached the foot of the stairs, ducked into a deserted hall, and broke for the door. "You haven't actually explained the crisis yet, Shade."

"Spirit World contacted Genkai, okay?" An uncertain pause followed, and she hardly dared breathe before he continued. "Apparently Taki's energy is all over the place. Spiking and going haywire. They're concerned he's going to hurt humans."

Which was a crime. A crime punishable by death.

And absolutely not something Taki would ever do. Not in a million years. No matter how angry he might inexplicably feel.

"You want me to check on him." It wasn't a question. Not really.

"I'd do it, but I'm still two hours from Sarayashiki. Can you get out there and visit him? I know you have class—"

"It's Taki, Shade. Of course I'll go." She emerged into drizzling rain and yanked the hood of her jacket over her head, hunching her shoulders against the wind. Campus was deserted, most students and faculty safely tucked away in lecture halls and offices, which meant there was no one around to gawk at her awkward jog. "I can afford to miss a class if it means making sure he's all right."

Asato let loose a breath, his relief palpable even through the phone. "Thanks, Weaver. I'm headed straight there, so call me if you need me. Otherwise, I'll see you soon."

"Sounds good."

As soon as the line went dead, she opened her texts and scrolled to her messages with Shuichi. He was still just a number, no name yet assigned. Some stupid, nervous piece of her feared naming him would be a jinx, a curse on whatever fledgling relationship she'd begun to build between them.

She stopped at the crosswalk leading to Nako Square and punched out a quick text while waiting for the light. _-A friend needs me, so I'm skipping class. See you Friday?-_ She hit send before she could second guess herself, then darted across the street and into the station.

It was a half hour later, as she surfaced in Sarayashiki, that his response at last came through, whether because he'd been busy at work or her cell's signal had failed in the tunnel, she'd never know. _-How about dinner tomorrow instead?-_

She tapped out a hurried acceptance, barely bothering to reread for clarity before sending it along. Her heart was pounding too hard, her hands trembling too thoroughly for a mere text to matter, and as she raced for Taki's distant apartment complex, she shoved her phone deep into her bag.

Shuichi could wait.

* * *

Taki lived on the fifth floor, in a cozy four-room place Michi had picked out herself.

Back then, Genkai hadn't had a system for assigning homes, nor a backlog of leases awaiting occupants. The halfway house had been a vague dream, an almost naïve hope that humans and demons could live side by side. It took nearly six months of successful relocations before Spirit World granted Genkai a housing allowance for the program.

But Michi had picked well for Taki, and once Genkai stopped paying his rent after a year, he decided to remain here—and he'd let Michi keep a key.

So she didn't bother with the door buzzer, and she didn't worry as she flew into the elevator. Even if Taki wasn't expecting her, even if he wasn't actually home, she could get in, and she'd work out the rest from there.

Waiting for the creaky elevator to climb five floors was like waiting for Yurie to finish one of her rambling stories. Endless in the moment, but by the time it was over, Michi couldn't even recall what had happened. One second she was on the first floor, jabbing the call button, the next she was at Taki's door, her keys clutched in her fist as she knocked.

The second her knuckles hit the wood paneling, the door swung inward, and it took only a heartbeat to realize Taki _was_ home.

And he wasn't alone.

* * *

AN: Dun, dun, dun. I'm so excited to finally be here, advancing the actual plot of the story beyond fleshing out relationships. We're about to see just how tangled up in the detectives Michi really is, whether she realizes it or not. I can't wait to share!

There are two references to _Your Name._ in this chapter. Not particularly well hidden, but bonus points to anyone who spots them regardless.

Endless thanks to everyone who reviewed, favorited, or added to their alerts last chapter! You guys ROCK! Special thanks to the reviewers: Antiqua-hime17, farewellhello, La Femme Absurde, ahyeon, nevvy, zZhell-butterflyZz, and Elvenrose22.

(I'm going to mention my Tumblr one more time because I forgot to include it in my original upload last week! For anyone who missed it then, I'm hereafteryyh over on Tumblr. I'd love to connect with anyone active over there. I'm still learning the platform, but I'm planning on sharing bits and bobs about this story's creation and probably some mid-week teasers between chapters. Hope to see you there!)


	5. Black and White

Michi stumbled in the doorway, her shoulder slamming off the frame as her heart dropped into her rain-soaked shoes.

A dozen feet down the hall, Taki huddled in his sparsely decorated living room, his arms over his head, his stoneskin activated. Whimpering. Forest green fear lancing across his Loom in electric strokes.

Above him, one hand raised, his knuckles glowing blue, stood Yusuke Urameshi. The same Yusuke who'd served her ramen six days prior. The same punky kid with slicked back hair who was Tied to Shuichi as permanently as any soul could ever be linked to another.

How?

It didn't make sense.

Shuichi wasn't part of this world. He couldn't be. He was her oasis. Her escape. He couldn't be more chains, more ropes lashing her to a territory she wanted so desperately to escape.

He _couldn't._

Yusuke must have heard her arrival, because he whirled, his glowing hand still aimed at Taki and his other rising like its twin. "Who are you— Michi?" The light around his knuckles flickered. Shock in the most neon shade of lime tore across his threads. "What the hell?"

Words wouldn't come. Not right away. And when at last they did, they weren't what she expected. "Stop threatening him," she ordered as she shoved the door closed. Keeping Taki safe meant protecting his identity, hiding his stoneskin from the unsuspecting neighbors who had become his friends—and apparently it also meant fending off Yusuke and sorting out whatever mess she'd stumbled into.

"Threatening _him_?" Yusuke snorted, but his posture relaxed, his fists dropping to his waist and propping against his hipbones. "In case, you're not aware, he's the one whose demon energy is out of control."

"I can't feel his energy," she said dryly. Of their own accord, her feet carried her down the paneled hall, and she paused at the edge of the living room carpet, her lips pressed into a thin line, rainwater dripping from her hood and slithering down her scalp in cold rivulets. "And even if I could, I trust Taki. He's not the threat here."

And truly he wasn't. That seemed obvious enough. Regardless of however his supposed energy was behaving, Taki's deference was undeniable—Yusuke shouldn't have needed to see the apparition's forest green fear or mustard anxiety to recognize that truth.

"Back up," she said, surprising herself again, then stripped off her wet jacket and pooled it atop her bag and shoes before crossing to Taki's side and dropping to her knees. When Yusuke remained motionless, shifting only enough to redirect his glare, she added firmly, "Now, please."

"Look, I don't know why the fuck you're here or why Kurama didn't tell me about this, but I had this situation handled. And if you can't feel this asshole's energy, then you definitely shouldn't be getting so cozy with him—"

"Can't you see you're scaring him?"

"Huh?"

She pressed a soothing hand to Taki's trembling shoulder, his granite skin rough against her palm, and shot Yusuke a scathing frown. "Why don't _you_ look instead of commanding me to do so? He's scared. Because of you. And I don't know what else is wrong or who Kurama is or what you're blathering about, but if you know about demons—and clearly you do—then you should know about psychics, and you should let this one do her job."

He faltered, his posture weakening further, and a swirl of emotions played across his Loom, too many to properly count. The mix of anxiety and suspicion and curiosity she associated with confusion bloomed in a tangled mess of greens and yellows, but she tuned his emotions out in favor of Taki's, focusing on the knot his threads had worked themselves into.

Fear remained primary among them, the green as dark as pine needles and just as prickly, sparking and snapping through his Loom in coarse ropes, but beneath that, he was a whirlwind of feeling. Mauve sadness. Pink regret. Rust-brown bitterness. Most worryingly, woven so deep she nearly mistook it for part of his core, a net of black anger, the threads coated in tar.

And then, stranger still, were the white filaments flitting about the edges of his Loom. Pale and colorless as fresh fallen snow. Delicate. Thin as spider's silk.

Bizarre.

Utterly so.

But not a mystery she could work out now. Not with Yusuke scowling at her, his hands still curled into fists at his hips. Not with Taki panicked and unraveling further by the second. So she pushed the white threads from her mind, vowing to investigate further when the timing wasn't quite so atrocious.

Then she bent closer to her charge, running her hand down his arm in soothing, repetitive strokes. "Taki," she murmured, "it's Michi. You're safe, I promise. Take a deep breath."

His shoulders shuddered, his skin creaking as he looked up. His pupils were dilated within his slate gray eyes, and he shook with great, trembling breaths, as if he'd run for miles and his lungs couldn't remember how to keep pace. "Miss Kuroki?"

A thousand times she'd told him to call her Michi. He never listened. Polite to a fault.

And yet Yusuke thought him a _threat_. As if.

"You okay?"

"Clearly not," Yusuke muttered.

She ignored him. "Taki?"

"No, miss." His voice was like gravel, deep as the rumbling of a fault line. "I'm so… angry."

She bit her lip, schooling her expression into some semblance of calm. Taki needed an anchor to hold on to, not more panicked storm winds blowing him away. "Shade told me as much. You can't figure out why?"

The demon gave no answer, but his skin rippled beneath her hand, the stone giving way to genuine flesh. Gingerly, he eased backward, thunking to the floor with all the grace his large body could muster.

At her back, Yusuke cleared his throat again. "When am I getting my explanation?"

"When I'm ready. Give me a second." _You impatient bastard_ , she tacked on silently. "Taki, why don't you stand? Move to the couch?" She'd have lifted him herself if he didn't dwarf her so impressively, if trying to move him wouldn't have been as ineffectual as attempting to shift a boulder.

In the end, he stirred without her, rumbling to his feet, the floor creaking beneath him, and traipsed to the couch in two lumbering strides. Groaning, he sank into the cushions, and as the padding caved beneath his immense weight, he slid toward the valley at their center with such helpless indifference that the fear fluttering in Michi's heart revved to new heights.

Something about him was _wrong_. His Loom felt off, those white threads prodding at her, setting her teeth on edge, clamoring against her territory's sixth sense with the grating intensity of nails screeching across a chalkboard. Whatever this was, whatever had him so riled, was above her paygrade. Far beyond her training.

Taki didn't need her.

He didn't need Asato.

He needed Genkai.

And she was nowhere to be found.

"Sorry. So sorry," Taki muttered, his voice muffled against his palms, his barrel chest still heaving. His apologies rang with the fervent remorse of a man who had done great wrong, as if he'd struck down some small child in a horrific accident, as if he could never atone for the sins writ on his soul. But there was no blood to be found, figurative or metaphorical. Nothing but that vague, flickering white twining through his mottled weave. "Don't want to a problem. Don't want to cause trouble—"

"Taki, stop. Calm down. More deep breaths, yeah?" She knelt until he had no choice but to look at her, his stony gaze peeking out from the spaces between his fingers. Offering a gentle smile, she squeezed his knee. "I'm going to chat with the jerk over there for a moment, okay? But I'm not going anywhere. I'll stay with you until we figure this out."

"Yes, Miss Kuroki."

She winced at the formality and bit back a sigh as his stoneskin returned, his flesh giving way to fissured granite in the breath between one heartbeat and the next. It wasn't quite the response she'd hoped for, but at least the fear had bled out of his threads. The jumble of colors left behind was little better, but progress was progress. No one could begrudge her that.

Even if that terrifying white still remained.

With a parting squeeze of Taki's knee, Michi rocked upright and twisted to Yusuke. He'd taken up residence at the mouth of the hall, right where carpet met wood flooring, leaning against the wall with cocky confidence, one dark brow raised in a sweeping slash across his tanned forehead. The picture of assurance, brassy and proud.

But what he didn't know, what he couldn't account for, was how his Loom betrayed him.

Goldenrod had consumed his threads, giving away his unease as surely as if he wore it tattooed across his forehead, right above that jauntily lifted eyebrow, and with her territory guiding her, it was no challenge to spot the physical signs of his discomfort. The tapping of his foot. His fingers, tucked behind his crossed arms, knotting and unknotting the seam of his shirt. The strain at the corners of his dark eyes as he studied her, no doubt trying to reconcile the girl he thought he'd pegged down with the one standing before him.

Oh, how she wished there weren't anything to resolve. What she would have given to be nothing but a simple girl he'd met on a simple date.

Six days ago, he'd probably categorized her in a matter of moments. It must've been so dreadfully simple to label her and wrap her up and shove her in the appropriate box. The girl mooning over his best friend. The nerd hiding behind leather boots and a cute dress. Quiet. Unassuming. A brief blip on his radar. Forgotten before she'd finished arriving.

And now, as she crossed the room to him, her head ducked, her bangs spilling into her field of view so she could see nothing but the black tongues of his sneakers, all those easy classifications had slipped through his fingers.

In all fairness, her labels for him had become equally inane. Hard-nosed punk. Ramen master. Shuichi's friend. None seemed to fit properly anymore. Not after she'd seen his fists glowing blue.

Witnessing a person's knuckles limned in energy had a way of hurling perspective out the window.

"So…" he drawled, eyeing her up and down. He let the pause hang a moment, its weight echoing hollow in her ears, but when she gave no immediate answer, he uncrossed his arms and swept his hands wide. "Seriously. Start talking. What the hell is this? Why are you here?"

"I could ask you the same thing."

"Oh, yeah? Could you?"

She let her pursed lips speak on her behalf.

His scowl deepened, and he slapped a hand against his chest. "I'm Yusuke Urameshi, and I was a fucking Spirit Detective, so no, you can't ask me the same damn thing."

Oh.

 _Oh._

"Spirit Detective," she repeated. The words tripped across her tongue. Unfamiliar. Uncomfortable. Wrong. As wrong as the white flickers in Taki's Loom.

Yusuke rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers in front of her face. "Um, hello. Did you just break? Stop repeating me and tell me why the hell you're here."

She barely heard him.

He was a Spirit Detective. Or he had been. Or something. The details weren't making sense. None of it added up. The only ex-Detective working with the Demon World transplants was Hiei. Genkai hadn't wanted to involve the rest. Or they hadn't wanted to be involved. _Or_ _something_. There was too much she didn't know—too much she'd refused to know. For years, she'd avoided the details, blocking out Asato's attempted explanations at every turn, stubbornly burying her head in the sand and stoppering her ears like some tantruming toddler whenever he planned to ensnare her more deeply in his arcane world.

The silence grew, and as it stretched on and on, Yusuke's irritation faded, the red in his Loom fading to pink regret. The threads clung to the strong cut of his jaw and draped down his throat, glimmering as he swallowed roughly. "Wait. Forget I said that. If you've never heard of—"

"I know what the Spirit Detectives are. In theory." She shifted awkwardly, peeking over her shoulder at Taki before gesturing further down the hall. Uncertain but compliant, Yusuke trailed her to the front door.

Once there, she backed into the corner, cradling her head in her hands, hoping in vain to block out the electric brilliance of his Loom. A headache had kicked up in her temples, its claws sinking into her skull, clutching at her thoughts with poisonous fingers, and the longer she looked at him, the deeper it wound its grip.

"I know _what_ the Spirit Detectives are," she said again, "but I didn't know _who_. I didn't know _you_ were one." She laughed, and it tumbled broken and unsteady from her lips. Goodness, what a stubborn child she'd been. Just once, just one darn time, she should've listened to Asato.

Yusuke gnawed on his thumb, puzzling her over like she was some twisted conundrum he couldn't iron out. "So you don't know _any_ of the Detectives? None? Of the old team, I mean."

An oddly phrased question, though perhaps not so bizarre given her answer. "I— No, not quite. I've met Hiei. We work together. Sort of. He helps coordinate the transitions for demons wishing to live in this world. Demons like Taki. But Hiei's the only one."

"Well shit."

She frowned. "Come again?"

He flapped a hand at her. "Nah. Never mind. But anyway, that's why you're here, huh? Because you helped this demon relocate to Human World?"

"In essence. I don't authorize it or anything, just facilitate—"

"Yeah, yeah. I know the process." His thumb returned to his teeth, and he bit down on his nail before proclaiming, "I'm kind of the guy responsible for that whole racket. Or, well, it's only possible _because_ of me."

His meaning went over her head, the subtext probably another puzzle piece Asato would've so happily given her, but it didn't much matter now. Not with Taki melting down on the couch and Asato barreling ever closer to Sarayashiki. For the moment, her goal hadn't changed. She still needed Yusuke to go—and somehow, she had to convince him to keep all of this a secret from Shuichi. At least for now. At least until she knew he'd be in her life long enough for this occult nonsense to matter to him in the first place.

But first, one question for Yusuke. Turnabout, after all, was fair play.

"I get that you were a Spirit Detective once upon a time, but why are you here _now_. Spirit World was giving us a chance to handle this. Why did they send you?"

Cobalt billowed across his Loom, a thunderous laugh bursting around his thumb. "I don't answer to Toddler-in-Chief anymore. He doesn't send me anywhere. Unless I agree to it, of course. But these parts are my turf. I'm not a big fan of demons throwing around their energy in the middle of an apartment block, you know?"

"So you sensed him."

"Duh. Are you seriously telling me you can't? My awareness is crap, but your pal might as well be a signal fire. Wait, scratch that. A signal _bon_ fire."

She shifted uneasily, focusing on her toes, wiggling them inside her water-logged socks. "That's not how my territory operates."

Even with her attention diverted, she didn't miss the pulse of lime surprise in his threads. "A territory, huh? Haven't run into a new one of those in a while." Then his eyes narrowed a notch. "Weird that I can't sense it, though."

What exactly to make of that answer she wasn't sure. Like so much else from the last twenty minutes, she filed it away to be examined later. It was time to focus on Taki. Which meant shooing Yusuke out the door at last—and swearing him to secrecy in the process.

"Look," she said, forcing herself to meet his dark gaze, refusing to wilt before the steady confidence waiting there. "All of this… It's temporary. At least for me. I'm going to figure out a way to close my territory for good and then I'll be free of it. Forever. So if you could not tell Shuichi, that would be grand."

His forehead creased in sudden disbelief, colors bursting across his Loom in shocks almost too quick to follow. Surprise. Suspicion. Anticipation. Then, last of all, the deep cobalt of amusement.

Ice frosted through her veins.

A smug grin curling his lips, Yusuke shoved his hands in his pockets. "Not sure lies are the best foundation for a relationship, but hey, whatever gets your rocks off, kid." He leaned closer, cocking his head to the side, looking at her like she'd molted out of a cocoon and emerged as a new creature entirely, some previously undiscovered beast in need of capture and study. "If you don't want me to tell Shuichi, I won't tell Shuichi. Consider it a deal."

A deal? She frowned. "We're not bargaining. I'm not giving you anything—"

"Sure you are. You're going to handle whatever the heck this mess is. Take it off my hands." In emphasis, he brushed his palms together. Once. Twice. Broad, aggressive swipes that struck his point home. "In return, I don't tell _Shuichi_ anything. It's a win-win."

She wavered, relief warring with apprehension in her chest. This was what she wanted after all. Him out of her hair. Her secret safe. He was right. It _was_ a win-win.

Or it should have been.

But there was a glint in his eye and a wry tilt to his lips that left her breathless with nerves, and as he twisted the doorknob and sauntered into the hall, a knot of anxiety took root in her gut, sinking like a stone to the depths. And she knew, with aching certainty, that the arrangement she'd struck was not what it seemed.

* * *

"He needs Genkai."

Asato sat as Taki's kitchen table, dragging a nail across the grains in its surface. Upon arrival, he'd poured himself a cup of the tea Michi had brewed for Taki, but now it sat forgotten, just out of reach of his fingertips, steam wafting pointlessly to the ceiling. His black jacket hung from the back of his chair, leaving him in a white button-down, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows.

The bags under his eyes hinted at sleepless nights, though she suspected the long hours he kept nowadays weren't of the same variety as those that plagued him as a teen. Back then, he'd been strung out on near constant anxiety, caught halfway between the studious tenacity his father demanded of him and a delinquent rebellion born of boredom. It was only after his territory manifested that he discovered purpose, that he unearthed goals on which to hone his unyielding determination.

First assisting the Spirit Detectives. Then saving her. Now managing the halfway house at Genkai's side. A neat checklist of priorities by which he'd chronicled his life. And somewhere along the way, lodged amongst those three worlds he'd come to love, he'd found himself, too.

But it seemed his old exhaustion was back, storm gray threads running through his Loom like rot. No doubt he'd sacrificed his sleeping habits in favor of analyzing transfer requests and balancing finance ledgers and supervising a million other tasks Genkai delegated his way—all of which could have waited until morning, _if_ he weren't Asato Kido, the least patient soul she'd ever met.

His nail caught in a fissure in the table's wood, and he sighed as he worked it free. Voice pitched low, he asked, "He's really that bad?"

From her seat on the counter, Michi peered beyond Asato's shoulder, out over the breakfast bar dividing the kitchen from the living area, and confirmed Taki remained unchanged, his stoneskin still rigid, his six-foot frame hunched near in half, incoherent apologies tumbling from his lips at the barest provocation.

Broken. _So_ broken.

And she hadn't a clue as to why.

"I can't get him to talk to me, Shade. Every time I try, he berates himself, apologizes, then berates himself more. We're spinning in circles. And far as I can tell, he hasn't actually done anything to apologize _for_." She kicked her legs, her stocking covered heels thudding against the cabinets, and fumbled for words. "There's white in his threads—and I know that probably doesn't sound alarming to you, but it's bizarre."

Asato shoved his hand into his thick, water-slicked hair, his fingers knotting amongst the bleached locks. "White? That's not one of your colors."

"Exactly." Over the last hour, her headache had grown, building and building until it seemed an entire marching band had taken up residence in her temples. Dragging the heel of her hand across her eyes, she nodded raggedly. "And it's not all of them. Not even most of them. But enough to worry me. I've never seen anything like it."

Nonplussed, he blinked at her, his tongue flitting out to wet his lips. When he spoke, his voice was blunt, his question thwacking home with all the finesse of a war club. "You think he's a threat?"

If her heart wasn't drumming against her breastbone like a battering ram, she might've laughed. "No. Never. But he needs help, and not the sort I know how to give."

"Hence Genkai." Sighing, Asato scratched the back of his neck. "Sounds like the right plan. Would've been real nice not to jump right back in my car, but if that's what he needs, so be it. What's a few more hours on the road?"

Right. Because he'd just driven here and now she was telling him to haul his butt back out into the mountains. Exhausted as he looked, he'd probably crash halfway there—and though that would solve this Taki conundrum, it wasn't quite the solution she was counting on.

"I can go with you—"

"No." He rocked his chair back onto two legs, angling his head toward the ceiling, his sharp chin jutting her way. "You already skipped one class for this. No need for more. Besides, that ride is a jail sentence. We shouldn't both have to suffer. I'll drive him out."

The navy in his threads told her not to bother arguing. His mind was made up. And really, she'd serve no purpose accompanying him. Even if the white in Taki's threads was as worrisome as her rioting nerves insisted it was, she couldn't do anything about it. Her territory allowed her to witness the Loom of Life, to view its colors and patterns and secrets, but she couldn't interact beyond that. She couldn't reach out and alter its threads any more than she could predict the future or manipulate fate—which was to say, not at all.

The Loom existed on some separate plane, visible to her, but not present in the here and now. She was nothing but a watcher, a creature lurking at its periphery. An onlooker. A bystander.

A useless, migraine-riddled wretch.

But Genkai would know what to do. She'd fix Taki. Like she'd fixed Michi.

Because that's what Genkai _did_. Her methods were harsh and her tongue knew no boundaries, but in the end, Genkai fixed people. Always.

Taki would be no different.

And so, as Asato shoved out of his chair and swaggered around the breakfast bar, calling out to Taki in the practiced, smoothly confident voice he always employed with transplants, she ducked down the hall into Taki's bedroom and packed him a duffel bag. Five shirts. Matching pants. A handful of unmentionables. All folded neatly into the bag's confines with exacting care. In the bathroom, she gathered his toiletries, the basics he'd need for a few nights away, as if this was nothing but a trip to summer camp.

Simple. An easy enough journey.

With any luck, he'd be home by Sunday, returning to the city with Asato, her new charge Ryota in tow.

She refused to entertain other possibilities, refused to believe those white threads were more than Genkai could handle.

By the time she was done packing, Asato had Taki at the door, coaching him through lacing up his sturdy boots, and together they bundled the agitated demon down the elevator and out to Asato's car street-parked one block down. It was only as the two departed, Asato's decrepit hatchback puttering down the block, that Michi realized she hadn't mentioned Yusuke to Asato. In the wake of her headache, the ex-Detective had slipped her mind entirely.

She could only hope he'd forgotten _her_ as easily.

* * *

The text came through that night, right as she was crawling into bed, her eyes heavy, her temples still drumming. The one she'd feared for hours. The one that would put an end to the single safe haven she'd unearthed in six years.

The one that would break her stupid, fluttering heart.

Except it didn't say what it was supposed to. It didn't trample her flimsy dreams to dust in a handful of black and white characters.

In fact, it made her laugh, those tiny words glowing on her too bright screen, shouting Shuichi's words into her dark, silent bedroom.

 _-I hear Yusuke saw you today. Hardly seems fair. Perhaps you can make it up to me?-_

She staved off the darkness just long enough to key out a response, her thumb gliding over the send button a moment before her eyelids fluttered shut, drawing her into quiet, colorless peace. The phone trilled softly as the text went through.

 _-Hmm, depends on your terms. What did you have in mind?-_

* * *

AN: Guys, confrontational Yusuke is about a thousand times too much fun to write. I could throw him into conflict and never stop writing about it, which would be delightful on my end but probably not the most captivating story…

Anyway, we've got a whole bunch of balls in the air now—Yusuke knowing about Michi, Michi seeing strange white threads, her burgeoning relationship with Kurama. I hope you're enjoying it as much as I am!

Thank you endlessly to the people who reviewed last week: CannonRebel, xXGemini14Xx, Star Charter, ahyeon, zZhell-butterflyZz, and Antiqua-hime17! I love hearing from you all!


	6. Deep in the Green

"How did I never realize these gardens were here?" Michi asked as she bent and traced her fingers across the petals of a silken flower.

When she'd woken that morning, a text from Shuichi had been waiting, coy instructions for her to be ready at seven that night rousing her with an ease her alarm never accomplished. In the hours following, her morning classes had blurred into a nonsensical stream, and then she'd whiled away the afternoon in her warded apartment, too jittery to accomplish even a page of her assigned readings.

Right at seven, prompt down to the very minute, Shuichi buzzed her intercom, and from there, he'd guided her back to the subway, hushing her questions with a wink and ephemeral smile. Their path had carried them toward Mushiyori University, then two stops farther down the line, where they emerged in the city's museum district.

And now here they were, surrounded by lush foliage and vibrant flowers, ensconced beneath the glass ceiling of a botanical garden she'd never known existed.

Shuichi must have returned home before picking her up, because his usual attire was nowhere to be found. Slacks had been exchanged for dark wash jeans, his dress shirt for a black cashmere sweater. When they'd arrived, before he buried the tips of his fingers in the pockets of his pants, he'd bunched his sleeves up to his elbows, exposing exquisitely defined forearms that did delicious things to the sparks jumping in her veins.

Twice.

That was the number of times his skin had skimmed hers. The number of times he'd set her whole body aflame with the slightest touch.

She suspected he hadn't even noticed.

Dipping his chin toward the golden bloom cupped in her palm, he said, "A globe flower. Beautiful, isn't it?"

This was the third wing of the building he'd led her through, the third in a series of greenhouses hidden right in the middle of Mushiyori. The first annex had been flooded with native Japanese flora, cherry blossoms and camellia and violets in a dozen dazzling shades growing beneath the domed glass overhead. Next, they'd wandered through a veritable jungle pulled straight from the Amazon, as lush and green as any forest she'd ever seen. And now he'd led her into the Alps, drifting amongst golden hawksbeard and edelweiss and alpine roses—or so his gentle murmurs claimed.

Withdrawing her hand, she crossed her arms and eyed him quizzically. "Come clean. Are you secretly a botanist? Was that business card you gave me just a ploy? A cover up?" She narrowed her eyes, fighting a smile. "How is it you've named every flower so far?"

His shrug rolled through his shoulders with a grace that seemed inhuman, smooth as gentle ripples across a glassy pond. "Gardening is something of a hobby of mine." His threads danced with pale cobalt. "An obsession, some might say."

"If nothing else, it's a lovely obsession." Ducking away from his bright gaze, she strolled deeper down the botanical garden's winding path. "You could do worse as far as hobbies go."

Chuckling, Shuichi glided at her side, his footsteps whisper soft against the gravel walkway. Her own boots crunched and grated, each movement amplifying the contrast between his easy poise and her fumbling nerves, and she wondered, not for the first time, what about her kept his interest, what urged him to return her smiles on the subway, to accept her request for dinner, to invite her here tonight.

For her, the answer was easy. His Loom, pale though it might be, had ensnared her thoroughly, twining about her as if with the strength of the Ties That Bind. But how she'd managed the same of him she couldn't possibly imagine.

It was… incomprehensible.

Stopping at a fresh bed of blossoms, she bent down to get a proper look at the small, bell-like buds. They were white as snow—white as the threads staining Taki's Loom. Instant dread crept through her at the recollection, twisting up her spine, and she shook her head as if to banish Taki from her mind, scrabbling for the first distraction she could think of.

"How is it all of this can be grown here?" she asked, the words stumbling forth in a jumble. As soon as she uttered them, she realized what a foolish question they'd formed. A blush flourished in her cheeks. "Pretend I didn't say that."

Shuichi tipped back his head, tapping his lip, miming deep thought. "The degree to which we're able to fabricate disparate climates remains impressive no matter how often I visit these gardens. Never had I imagined temperature and moisture regulation might prove so fascinating."

Michi laughed, the note bright and clear even to her own ears. Worries about Taki slipped away, carried off on the pleasant hum of Shuichi's soft voice. "Are you mocking me? Or being genuine? And," she continued as she stood, "which alarms me more?"

"And here I thought we'd already established my propensity for all things nerdy."

Just like that, quick as it had returned, the fizzing in her veins puttered away to nothing yet again.

It had been Yusuke who'd declared Shuichi—and Michi—a nerd. The same Yusuke she'd spent the last hour steadfastly steering the conversation away from at every opportunity. The same Yusuke who knew her most deeply guarded secret.

References to him, no matter how oblique, flooded her system with frost, as overwhelming and unpleasant as if she'd clambered straight into a tub of ice water.

If Shuichi identified her shift in mood, he gave no acknowledgement. Instead, calm as could be, he said, "I do hope you're not bored here."

She fought for levity as she bumped her elbow against his, and though the contact failed to ignite her heart as it had before, she did manage to summon a smile, however brief it lasted. "Don't be silly. This is incredible." She pointed back at the bell-like flowers they'd left behind. "What are those? They're gorgeous. Maybe my favorite yet."

He glanced back, his hair shifting over his shoulder in a crimson wave. "Ah. Lilies of the valley. A brilliant choice to favor."

A pleased thrill ran through her. "Good to know my tastes pass muster."

Ahead, a false brook ran through the flowerbeds, its water burbling over the gravel, gliding off into the foliage on a manmade trail. A bridge arched above the current, and their path took them over it. Michi paused at its center, leaning against the railing and peering at the koi swimming downstream.

As Shuichi settled at her side, a hip propped against the rail, she murmured, "You know, for all the authenticity put into these different wings, I'm shocked no one realized koi aren't the most European of fish."

The faint gleam of cobalt she'd glimpsed in his Loom previously now flashed bright. "How right you are."

Hardly daring to breathe, she gripped the railing tight, her nails finding grooves in the wood. Shuichi stood _so_ close. If she leaned to the left a matter of inches, she'd fit snuggly into his side—or, at least, she might fit snuggly. There was no way of knowing how well they'd interlock, whether they'd go together like the last pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle or if their edges would remain separate. Incompatible.

But she knew which she hoped for with every foolish, fluttering piece of her heart.

Here, immersed in the botanical garden's swirl of viridian leaves and colorful flowers, his Loom was more muted than it had ever been. Among so much else, caught between the bright hues of the real world, it practically disappeared—and the more time she spent with him, the less unsettling that sensation proved.

She could almost— _almost_ —pretend she was the Michi of old, the Michi who had winked out of existence one wretched night five years ago, the Michi who had tumbled into bed worrying about a science fair and the boy who'd asked her out only to never wake back up. Because, truly, the girl who'd stirred beneath Michi's indigo comforter the next morning, opening her eyes to a world awash in threads, hadn't been _Michi_. Not anymore.

But now, alone with Shuichi, staring down at the babbling stream, it was as though she could reach out to the girl in the water's reflection, and the hand extending back through the bubbles belonged to her—to _Michi_. The real one.

Almost.

Sort of.

And yet, not quite.

Shuichi's hand brushed her elbow, and she turned to him on instinct, startling at his proximity, finding him even closer than she'd realized. His fingers remained at the crook of her arm, grazing her skin like featherlight butterfly kisses, and she had to tip her head back to glimpse him properly.

A heartbeat of quiet held them, and for that perilous moment, her chest flooded with dread, a tightness clamping around her heart and wrangling her lungs, a demon's touch lighting fearful coals in her belly. There was something in the indefinable green of his eyes, in the slight crooking of his brows, in the barest parting of his lips, that set her on edge. A muscle ticked in his throat, as if he were about to speak but had forgotten how, as if he were lost in a thought, the same words circling over and over behind his enigmatic gaze.

Surely there was only one topic that could unnerve him so thoroughly.

Surely Yusuke had failed to keep her secret.

Surely it was all about to end.

But then Shuichi's other hand rose to mimic the first, closing over her right elbow and drawing her in. Her palms found his chest, seeking balance, splaying against his cashmere sweater's softness, discovering hard planes of muscle hidden beneath.

A flicker of blue blazed across his threads, playing over his cheeks in broad strokes. Navy determination? Some sudden resolution seizing him? Maybe. She'd never seen a blue so deep in his Loom before.

"Shuichi—"

His lips were soft when they found hers. Gentle. More a testing of the waters than any sort of statement.

She forgot how to breathe.

Her pulse drummed everywhere, pounding in her temples, thrumming in her hands, jumping in the delicate pads of her fingers, and she felt his heartbeat in turn, thumping against her right palm as she leaned closer. His hand ghosted up her arm, the sleeve of her sweater dress bunching upward before falling free again. His fingers twined through her hair.

Then, as quick as they'd come, his digits retreated. A handful of stolen breaths departed with them, caught in his clutches as he eased back, his hand returning to her elbow.

Neither of them spoke a word as they left the bridge, meandering deeper into the deserted garden, but his hand remained in hers, his fingers wound tight through her own, his thumb stroking a slow, steady pattern across the underside of her wrist. And all the while, his Loom glowed around them, lit in pale blues and light purples. Happiness, contentment, affection. A miniature galaxy that was all theirs to explore.

And for once, for one blessed evening, her headaches were nowhere to be found.

* * *

Asato called Saturday morning, Michi's phone ringing incessantly as she bolted from the bathroom to the kitchen, only cutting out once she swiped a thumb across the screen and jammed it to her ear. Padding back the way she'd come, she ran a cursory hand over her head, checking the curls she'd so carefully styled. "What's up, Shade?"

"Change of plans."

The bathroom tile was icy beneath her bare toes as she skipped to the mat before the sink and shot a frown at her reflection. "Meaning what? I can't transfer Ryota today—"

"Yeah, I know. Nanako's birthday. I didn't forget." He paused a moment, and she caught the distinct sound of rushing wind before he cleared his throat and continued, "I'm driving back to Mushiyori now. Ryota's not with me."

Her mirror image's brow creased deep. "Someday you're going to learn not to speak in riddles, Shade."

"Sorry. I just… It's been a long two days."

Her flippancy fizzled away. Switching the phone to speaker, she propped it above the sink and grabbed her curling wand, set on finishing the work she'd started before he called. She needed something to keep her hands busy, something to keep the panic roiling in her gut at bay. "Is Taki okay?"

"He's not… not okay. But he's not normal. Genkai wants to keep him at the shrine a while longer, another week or two, and she'd rather not have a new transplant settling in while she's so preoccupied with Taki."

"So Ryota will remain at the shrine, too?"

"For now." He sighed. "Anyway, it's not that Genkai's worried about Taki necessarily. That's probably too strong a word, but she thinks it's better to have eyes on him while he works through whatever this is. Better that than sitting by and waiting for some avoidable incident to ruin everything the halfway house has accomplished."

A curl sprung free of her wand, and she focused on teasing it into place, striving for an even tone as she repeated, "An incident? I can't imagine how you think I'm going to interpret that other than the obvious, and I'm telling you—yet again—Taki wouldn't be violent. Ever. He's not going to hurt humans."

"You're probably right, but we can't take chances, Weaver. Not with this."

Gritting her teeth, she wound a final lock of hair around the heated iron, mindful of her wavering fingers. "And you're driving home why exactly? If Genkai's concerned, doesn't she need your help?"

He snorted, his usual spark of humor at last returning to his voice. "I think she's sick of having so many guests. Can't get rid of the others, so she kicked me out. Which is for the best really. If I stayed gone too much longer, Yana would probably start thinking the whole apartment belongs to him."

Mitsunari Yanagisawa. An old high school friend of Asato's—and a fellow psychic. He'd taken Michi's old bedroom after she'd moved out on her own, a swap she pegged as good for Asato. Of his friends, Yana was her favorite, definitely the one she'd pick to replace herself—though that didn't necessarily say much.

After all, the competition wasn't all that stiff.

In the grand scheme of things, the blind date she'd gone on with Asato's other close friend—Yu Kaito, another psychic whose territory manifested five years ago—probably hadn't been the worst dinner in human history. But from the way Kaito morphed into an irritable, blustering grouch any time they saw each other, he seemed to think it had been world-endingly atrocious.

Which, to be clear, was his fault. Not hers.

Asato insisted general grouchiness was nothing new for Kaito, but he didn't even attempt a defense for the blustering. Still, if Kaito were such a crank to begin with, it begged the question why Asato had set them up in the first place.

A date with Yana probably wouldn't have gone any better, but at least Yana wouldn't be such an utter grump about it later.

"Honestly," she said as she flicked off her curling wand, "I think you could straight up move out and Yana would just turn your room into an Asato shrine. Keeping it spotless and orderly for all eternity. Like a lapdog waiting loyally for its master to return home."

Asato laughter burst through her phone in a scattering of static, and maybe it was just the brief blip of interference, but she couldn't help thinking there was strain in the sound, a forced, barky quality she wasn't used to with Asato.

"There's something more, isn't there?"

He wavered. "Look, it might be nothing, so I don't think we should panic or anything." A second bout of hesitation followed, accompanied by more static.

She scooped up her makeup bag with trembling hands, glad to occupy her fingers with something other than fidgeting. "Spit it out, Shade."

"I learned why the Detectives reunited last weekend."

Her mascara tube clattered into the sink. "Oh?" she managed.

"Yup. Genkai filled me in. Guess she decided it wasn't something she should keep secret. Or that it didn't need to be a secret? I don't know."

"Shade. The point?"

"Right, sorry." A crackle of feedback announced his heavy sigh. "So apparently there's been this rash of psychics losing control of their powers. In public. A few civilians have gotten hurt."

Michi's hands stilled, her mascara half-stuck in the drain. She couldn't even pretend to get ready, not with the way her stomach twisted downward, plunging to her toes buried in the bathmat. She couldn't formulate a proper question, but it didn't matter, because now that Asato had started talking, he wasn't stopping.

"Spirit World wants the incidents investigated. Before they get worse. For now they've been able to pass off the psychic… events as accidents. A car crash. A freak lightning storm. But if it keeps up, people will catch on. That's where the Detectives come in. Spirit World hasn't pulled in anyone new to fill the role since they let the old team go, so they're tapping on them again."

"And what are they looking in to exactly?"

A brief pause, then, "I don't know. Not precisely. We'd have to ask them. But in the meantime, Genkai wants me—and you and Yana and Kaito, anyone with a territory basically—on alert."

She gripped the sink's basin, leaning into the ceramic, pressing so hard her hip bones ached. "Is that who's being affected? Psychics with territories?"

"Seems like it. And after the flare ups, their territories are gone. Poof. Like they never existed. So if you notice anything weird with your territory, don't dismiss it."

Like the white threads.

As if he'd read her mind, Asato added, "Might be that's what happened with Taki. That's Genkai's theory anyway. That your territory isn't behaving normally. But she doesn't know for sure, and she doesn't want you jumping to conclusions. So seriously, Weaver, don't freak out."

She wasn't.

Not about the white threads. Or—not _only_ about the white threads.

But that wasn't the lone way her territory had been different recently. Because there was Shuichi, too. Shuichi and his unreadable Loom.

She hadn't seen anything similar on anyone else. In the month since she'd first encountered him on the subway, no one's Loom had been as pale as Shuichi's, as washed out. So maybe it wasn't anything. Maybe it didn't mean her territory was failing. Maybe it was just him—her perfect, unbelievable oasis.

But if it did mean that… Well, her territory didn't hurt people. She couldn't manipulate the Loom of Life. She couldn't _use_ it for anything. So what was the worst that could happen? That it might close forever? Wasn't that what she'd wanted for years?

"Weaver?"

"Yeah, I'm here. And I'm fine. My territory has been fine."

In the lull before his answer, she could practically see him scratching the back of his neck, driving with his knee in that way she always scolded him for. "Same here. I've been good. But pay attention anyway, yeah? Humor me."

"Sure, Shade. Whatever you say."

* * *

Michi's days ran into each other, a stream of classes and too-short subway rides, a jumble of blissful, colorless dates and infrequent texts from Asato. She began to mark time not by sunrises and sunsets, not by dawns and dusks, but by how long it had been since she'd seen Shuichi, how long since she'd been graced with the tranquility of his Loom.

Around him, her headaches stopped. Not because of _him_. Not really. Yes, she'd grown to treasure the moments when his real grin broke through his customary, fleeting smile, the one he offered to strangers and friends alike, the one he wore like an ever-ready mask. Better still were the times when he threw his head back and laughed, really and truly _laughed_ , all the way down to his bones. But the peace he gave her wasn't a conscious choice. It didn't stem from his quick kisses or his dancing eyes. Shuichi hadn't cured her. That wasn't how the world worked.

But his Loom, regardless of his control over it, was a miracle. Unlike anything she'd experienced in her last five years of hell.

And maybe it was her territory coming apart at the not-so-figurative seams, but somehow—despite Asato's urgings for constant vigilance—she couldn't bring herself to care. Not properly.

If this was all the respite she'd ever manage to find, then she wouldn't waste it. She wouldn't pry and poke and prod as Genkai might've wished. She wouldn't dig for further understanding.

For as long as it lasted, for as long as Shuichi enjoyed her company as much as she enjoyed his, she'd revel in it. In every precious second. In every soothing heartbeat.

And the rest of it? The halfway house. The unstable psychics. Her tenuous ties to the Spirit Detectives. None of that mattered. After all, being with Shuichi was almost like being free, and nothing— _nothing_ —could be allowed to ruin that.

* * *

AN: Plot ahoy! We're really getting into the thick of it now!

So as this story crystalized in my head months ago, a few songs became incredibly entwined with my ideas. Those songs probably don't reflect the story all that well, but there are lyrics of each that I'll never manage to separate from Michi now that they're linked in my head. As each becomes relevant, I figured I'd share the important snippets.

As such, now's as opportune a time as any to share that the first such song is 'High on Humans' by Oh Wonder, specifically these lines: "And I can feel the static rising up and out your mouth / We're making waves of conversation / Got a rush of energy" and "Caught up in our skin, gotta fight the grind / I can make your day glow sun to rainbow / Color in your step, let me lose your mind." (Endless thanks to Star Charter for getting me hooked on it!)

It was absurdly fun to see everyone's reactions to last chapter, particularly regarding how screwed (or not) Michi is in regards to Kurama having figured her out. I love all the theorizing. Thanks to all the reviewers: Star Charter, E.V. Delacy, knightsqueen05, ahyeon, Antiqua-hime17, zZhell-butterflyZz, CrystalVixen93, and Addicted-to-GazettE!


	7. Crimson Rising

Two weeks after the botanical gardens, Asato showed up on Michi's doorstep.

He let himself in, and she didn't even stir from the couch as he stomped over the threshold, shrugging out of his raincoat with an overly dramatic groan. "Damn, I'm sick of the rain."

"Shoes off on the mat," she called without looking, and his boots squeaked as he lurched to a halt, his muttered grumbles following not long after.

On her television, her avatar leapt and darted across mountainous terrain, a sword in one hand, a flame spell blazing in the other, waiting to be fired. Yet again, she'd long since finished the quest assigned for Nordic Literature, but the game had sucked her in and she'd been at it for hours. Even Asato's newfound presence didn't change that.

Still grousing, Asato flopped down beside her and kicked his feet up on the ottoman, wiggling his toes. "If my feet smell, I blame you."

She rolled her eyes. "What brings you here, Shade?"

"I can't visit my dear old cousin without facing an inquisition?"

"You _can_. But last I checked, you act like the rain will melt you right into your boots, so pardon me for being surprised you're out and about in the midst of a thunderstorm."

Nature seemed to agree with her sentiment, and a boom of rolling thunder cracked beyond her windows. Asato tossed the sky the bird, then slouched further into the cushions. "Well, technically, I guess you could say this is a work call."

"Why? What's happened now? Did Genkai finally clear Ryota for transition?"

"Nope." He rolled his head sideways, waving a hand in her peripheral vision. When she ignored him, he raised a leg, swinging it back and forth to block her view, splaying his toes with all the dexterity he could manage. Lavender affection and cobalt amusement warred in his threads, prodding at her territory, demanding attention. "You planning to focus? Or…"

"I can multitask." A quick jab of a joystick and smashing of a button launched her character into a killing animation, her enemy's head spinning off screen.

Asato heaved another sigh. "Fine. But I'm not repeating myself."

"You won't need to—"

He spoke over her. "I think Genkai is planning to send Ryota home with you when you next come out for training. You know, spend the morning hours working on your territory, then head straight to Itomori to settle him in. Makes sense, I guess. Saves me the train ride out."

"And Taki?"

"No change."

An identical answer to those he'd given a dozen times now, and for his patience, if nothing else, she had to give him credit. She'd asked nearly every day, unable to bottle the question up. For all she loved the change Shuichi had wrought in her territory, Taki's white threads still unsettled her. _They_ were an abnormality she'd happily do without.

"You think he'll get back to normal?"

"I hope so. Can't guarantee it though."

At last she tapped pause and shifted to face him, drawing her knees to her chest, her controller propped atop them. "So why are you here then? Not Ryota. Not Taki. So why?"

"I filled in on your last Demon World check-in, but I'm a bit stretched thin at the moment, popping in on transplants for Genkai every waking second, so I was hoping you could return to the fold." His grin turned lop-sided. "I'm sure Hiei missed you dearly."

Well. It had to come eventually.

A fresh brush with an ex-Detective. For days now, she'd been waiting for a run-in with Yusuke. It hadn't been hard to piece together the truth about his connection to Shuichi. They weren't just old friends. They were roommates. Shuichi and Yusuke and a third guy she hadn't met. A Kuwabara who Shuichi had referenced in passing more than once.

Somehow it hadn't occurred to her that she'd see Hiei again before Yusuke. When she'd ducked out of her duties for the halfway house at the start of the semester, she'd shirked off her monthly rendezvous with the fire demon as well, and Asato had picked up the slack. In the rush of the last few weeks, she hadn't even realized the next check-in was coming up.

She scooped up her phone and confirmed the date. "It's tomorrow, right?"

Slumped as he was, Asato attempted a nod, but it resulted in little more than a creasing of the cushion, his head flopping back and forth. "Can you make it?"

She wanted to say no. To wash her hands of Hiei and his snark and his brash, unforgiving Loom. But looking at Asato, his head still rocking as if he didn't even have the energy to squelch its momentum, dark shadows lurking beneath his eyes, steely gray in his threads, she couldn't bring herself to turn him away.

"Sure can. Noon, like always?"

"Far as I know."

"Okay. I'll handle it." Setting aside her controller, she swung to her feet. "You look like you need food. Wait here. Put on a show or something." Rounding the couch, she jabbed a finger into his shoulder before breaking for the kitchen. " _Don't_ touch my game."

Even with her back turned, she knew the precise shade of blue conquering his gray exhaustion. That particular mix of cobalt and teal so common in Asato's threads.

Still, when she returned with a bowl of udon, sleep had claimed him. Muffling a laugh against her knuckles, she tucked a blanket around his sides and left him undisturbed. He was long overdue for some solid rest, and as fresh thunder rumbled, she recognized that he needed more than a mere nap. He needed _help_. As much as she hated all it entailed, after everything, the least she owed him was a little assistance.

She could manage a visit with Hiei.

He wasn't _that_ horrid.

* * *

She'd been wrong.

Hiei was _that_ horrid. As brutish and rude and abrasive as any soul could possibly be. Somehow, two months without seeing him had dulled her recollection of his harsh edges, his acerbic Loom. Where Shuichi's colors were muted and Yusuke's electric, Hiei's shone with a sharpness that hurt her eyes. Each thread was as precise and fine as spider's silk, shining beneath the noonday sun with a glint that cut straight into her skull.

He was all crimson annoyance and sulking black anger, an undercurrent of buttercup yellow boredom falsely softening the irritation tucked in his every movement. Such a bright, innocent color ruined on such a rough soul.

"Let's get this over with," he muttered as she joined him in the park on the city outskirts where they always met. He'd chosen this place ages ago, and though it possessed no immediate subway access, as far as meeting points with nefarious demons went, it wasn't the worst.

A headache already smarting to life in her temples, she perched at the edge of the bench where Hiei sprawled, his elbows braced on its slatted back, one leg drawn to his chest. "Good to see you, too."

"Where's that cousin of yours?"

No preamble then. Fair enough. It had been her who left him in the lurch last month, after all. In that sense, perhaps a touch of annoyance wasn't unfounded.

"Busy. We've had some issues with a transplant."

He stiffened. Only a degree. But in conjunction with a flicker of lime through his Loom, it wasn't hard to spot the tightening in his jaw. "What sort of issues?"

"Taki, the first demon I brought over, if you remember him, has been having some… temperament problems. Unfounded anger." _Not so unlike your own_. The last bit she appended silently, content never knowing how he might react to the barb. "He's at Genkai's. She's helping him through it."

"How did Ryota's transition go?" If she hadn't known better, she might've thought an actual ripple of lavender affection wormed through his threads at the mention of her new charge.

"It hasn't. He's at the shrine, too. Genkai has been too preoccupied to proceed with his move."

Hiei's fist, level with her shoulder on the bench's backing, flexed. Once. Twice. Then he said, "When was she planning to inform me?"

"Apparently right now." Michi shrugged. "Look, I'm here because Genkai is working herself to the bone. Asato, too. So cut everyone some slack, all right?"

His gaze lanced her way, ruby red threads of annoyance disappearing over his irises, indistinguishable from their inhuman tint. "You're shirking your duties." A statement. Pointed and sharp.

She laughed, not even his vicious threads enough to silence her. "Two years in and you still don't realize how little I want to do with all this? These aren't my duties. They're a favor. For Genkai. Some semblance of gratitude, I guess. For helping me."

Laughing, it seemed, had not been the right response.

Nothing about his posture changed. His arms stayed in place, his leg remained bent, his smoldering glare persisted. But something in the air distorted. Heat rippled across her skin, sudden and out of place amongst the trees gone rust-red with the season, their leaves drifting away on the slightest breeze. And yet, despite that unnatural warmth in the air, goosebumps broke across her arms, hair prickling at the back of her neck.

Telling Yusuke she couldn't sense demon energy hadn't been a lie. In the abstract, energy of any kind was beyond her sense of perception, but she wasn't so oblivious as to miss Hiei's aura when it was aimed at her own skin.

"Hn. Watch your step, human."

Still, she didn't back down. He wouldn't hurt her. Not because he cared or because his rough exterior hid a heart of gold, but because Spirit World law would see him thrown in jail for life—if not put to death entirely—for inflicting harm on a human civilian.

Which made his threats empty.

Mostly.

Straightening her shoulders, she crossed her legs at the knees and laced her fingers atop her dark leggings. Next to Hiei's coarse trousers, their black cotton seemed fit for a ball. "What happened to getting this over with? The less you threaten me and the more you cooperate, the sooner we're both free."

The petulant jut of his chin was all the answer she needed.

Loosing a steadying breath through her nose, she tucked her bangs behind her ear. "Any new requests for transfer?"

"Six applications. Four I've already turned down. Two are still being vetted." He angled his head toward her only a degree, his predatory eyes cutting sideways. "Not much point rushing the process if you're not even going to advance those we bring through."

"Genkai will sort out the hang-up. We both know that. Pretending otherwise won't intimidate me." She picked pilled-up fabric off her tights, letting the scraps of fluff float away on a gust of wind. "What else is there? Last time I saw you, your higher ups were discussing ramping up the quotient of transplants allowed through monthly. Any decisions on that?"

"No."

"Any idea when we can expect a verdict?"

"No."

She resisted a grimace. How had this brute ever been chosen as a Spirit Detective? And who in the three worlds had possibly thought him the right pick for this job? "Has Spirit World been consulted?"

"Hn."

"An actual answer please."

He sneered. "Not that I'm aware of."

Smoothing a hand across the hem of her dress, she let her gaze skitter across the park, glancing over a trio of children playing on a distant swing set, noting a man jogging with his dog, filing each detail away, stockpiling distractions to combat her mounting frustration—and, more than anything, willing her tone to stay calm. "Is that it then? A bunch of non-answers."

"I've been preoccupied," he muttered tonelessly. "The border patrol has not been my primary concern."

Oh. Right.

Because the Detectives had been called back together. Which included him. Somehow, she hadn't quite connected that piece yet—that Hiei must have ventured out to Genkai's shrine with the rest of them, called in on Spirit Word's new case, briefed on investigating psychics whose territories were behaving strangely.

Psychics like her. Potentially. If Shuichi's muted Loom and Taki's white threads were actual signs and not mere abnormalities.

She cleared her throat, changed the subject. "What about the other end of things then? How many humans have been picked up this month?"

"Twenty-nine."

"That many?"

His lip ticked upward, a fresh snarl contorting his angular features, casting shadows along his sharp jaw and narrow, slashing nose. "Useless fools fall ass over head along the border daily. Nuisances."

The way his cutting, crimson threads chafed against her territory granted his annoyance an almost personal tinge, as if she'd earned his irritation by simply sharing a genetic history with the humans he'd processed in the preceding weeks. Then again, even knowing what little she did of Hiei, it wouldn't shock her if association by species really was enough to invoke his ire.

"You followed procedure with their returns—"

"Don't patronize me, girl. Unlike you, I haven't shunned my responsibilities. I wiped their memories, glossed over the voids left behind, and returned them to that self-important prick who considers himself Kurama's rival, not a hair on their idiot heads harmed."

Michi's heart skipped a beat.

Half of Hiei's retort she could make sense of. The 'self-important prick' had to be Yu Kaito. Like Asato, Kaito worshipped the ground Genkai walked on, and he'd been involved in the halfway house from its start-up, long before Asato had roped Michi in, though Kaito's participation hinged on the human side of the job, not on demon transfers. From what she'd gathered, he and Hiei had a rocky history, one she'd never pried too far into.

But it was the name Hiei had hissed, his tone softening the barest degree as he uttered it, that set her teeth on edge.

 _Kurama_.

She'd heard it before. Yusuke had tossed it out, too. Back in Taki's apartment. He'd asked why Kurama hadn't told him about her, though what could possibly prompt that question, she couldn't fathom. It wasn't a name that meant anything to her—or it hadn't. Now it kept cropping up, and she wasn't so sure anymore.

A knot lodged itself in her throat, solid as a rock, but she forced words past it. "Who is that? Kurama. Should I know that name?"

"Not if he doesn't want you to."

An answer with precisely no meaning.

Which left her fumbling, questions building up against the back of her teeth, all wrong, all easily deflected, none the right way to tease out an explanation. For all the blunt fury crackling at the core of his Loom, Hiei had a tendency to hedge and circle, a propensity for controlling conversation with an iron-fisted grip. He treated dialogue like war, a tireless hunt in which he was the predator harassing his prey, nipping at their heels, goading them until exhaustion led them astray.

Now, in the midst of their present skirmish, her uncertainty had worn his patience thin, his yellow boredom melting into darkening crimson. "What of operations here?" he growled. "What's the old hag's excuse for the delays? One problematic demon is enough set her whole enterprise off the rails?"

Helpless before his threads' cutting edges, Michi pressed the pads of her fingers over her eyes. "The delay started before Taki. Genkai needs more hands, more people on this end to get apparitions settled and to perform routine appraisals once they are."

"So blame lies at your feet."

"Excuse me?" Her fingers slipped wide, allowing her a glimpse of his exasperated sneer.

"You're slacking. Skipping our meetings." He rapped his knuckles against the knee tugged up against his chest. "Kido informed me he'd taken on your cases last month. Dull human life too much for you to handle, girl?"

Her breath guttered.

Jerk.

A perilous silence built between them in the moments that followed, and she teetered, her tenuous hold on her manners waning before the mocking lilt in his voice, the over-bright jab of his threads. But she clung to poise, to an even tone and patient smile, hoping he read the signs tucked beneath, in the hard edge of her gaze and faint clipping of her words—the proof she wasn't the timid, frightened girl he appeared to think she was.

"For a final time, Hiei, allow me to remind you that I have a life beyond all this." Her hands dropped from her face, spreading wide, as if by mere force of will she could conjure up the tangled mess of the halfway house and bare it before him. "I attend university. I have friends. I… date. And every day, I aspire to rid myself of my territory. The moment I do, the moment I'm free, I'm done with all this. For good. So no, I haven't been picking up new transfers or coming to Asato's aide, but I don't have to. I've no obligation to any of this." She met his blazing glare head on, combating it with a smile as icy as any glacier. "But I help. When I can manage it. And to that end, I'll let Genkai know you're disappointed with the speed of her operation. I'm sure she'll be delighted to discuss remedies with you."

Or to pound his face in.

A fact the pinched tightness around his eyes confirmed his awareness of.

"Hn." He swung his head forward, turning his focus on the children still playing in the distance, glowering so intently she half-feared the boys might burst into flame. "That's not necessary. I'll tell her myself."

"Because you'll be seeing her soon." The words emerged as a statement rather than the question Michi had intended. "As part of your mission for Spirit World."

"What of it?"

Her pulse leapt and skittered in her veins, twisting itself into knots inside her temples, a headache spilling outward. She did her best to ignore its insidious touch as she said, "Have you made any progress? Toward working out why psychics are losing control of their territory, I mean."

The telltale press of heat announced the return of his energy. "How do you know any of that?"

"Asato filled me in."

He stared at her, nonplussed.

"Kido," she clarified.

"Idiot shouldn't have told you anything."

"Well he did. And I'm a psychic. With a territory. So it matters to me." And it did. Sort of. She wasn't afraid of her territory malfunctioning, not really, not when it was so utterly harmless—to others, at least—but if the Detectives had uncovered leads in their case, it'd give her peace of mind nonetheless. For Asato's sake, if not her own. "What have you learned?"

"Nothing that matters to you," he drawled, his monotone dripping with boredom that was nowhere to be found in his Loom. An act. A put on. Undercut further still by the way his gaze flicked away, darting back to the swing set, now abandoned, the kids run off somewhere when she'd been too distracted to notice.

Whatever _nothing_ the Detectives had established was more absolute than what Hiei deemed relevant to her. The Detectives had unearthed no answers. That much was clear.

She coughed lightly into her fist, banishing the last vestiges of unease from her system. There were still questions to ask, puzzle pieces to sort through. "You're working with Yusuke on this, right?"

He jerked his head downward. All the confirmation he appeared willing to give.

"And… Kurama, too?" It seemed a logical leap. That name kept surfacing around the ex-Detectives. Perhaps Kurama, whoever he was, counted amongst that number.

"Yes. And the buffoon as well. Useless, driveling waste of carbon that he is."

Well then.

Best not tug on that thread any further.

She wondered, not for the first time, if Shuichi realized who he'd gotten himself tangled up with, if he'd ever glimpsed the occult world his Threadbrother was such a prominent part of.

His soul was Tied to Yusuke's, linked together by a bond that may very well only be broken in death, and that sort of friendship necessitated value. It couldn't—shouldn't—be given up easily. But that didn't alter how unbefitting such a connection was for a seemingly normal young man in line to inherit his step-father's bustling business. Therein lay another part of Shuichi's life that had come into focus over the last few days—his family's ownership of Hatanaka Properties, the company whose business card remained tucked inside her nightstand, its silken surface gone haggard with the number of times she'd traced its navy lettering.

Yusuke didn't fit into that picture. Based on personality alone, he'd already presented a jarring mismatch, as if he'd been photoshopped into Shuichi's life without being granted a shadow. And that was before accounting for his old career. A Spirit Detective. Someone as deeply rooted in the interconnections of the three worlds as a soul could possibly be.

Someone with associates—maybe even friends—like Hiei.

It was almost laughable, picturing affable, sedate Shuichi attempting even the barest of conversations with vicious, ill-mannered Hiei. But then again, it was no easier to imagine Shuichi alongside the Yusuke she'd last seen, his fists glowing blue, his wry frame towering over Taki, looking for all the world like he'd planned to beat the cowering apparition into the floorboards until nothing remained but bloodstains.

So what did she know, really?

"How often do you see Genkai?" she asked once the quiet stretched too long. Her real question stayed unspoken, caught on her tongue, anticipating his response with bated breath.

 _How often do I need to avoid the temple?_

"I'm not discussing this with you. Get your answers from Kido." Scoffing, Hiei unfurled his leg. Dust burst from the path in a cloud as his boot hit the hard-packed dirt. "Let's get through the rest of this nonsense."

As irritated with him as his crimson threads indicated he was with her, she asked with saccharine sweetness, "Why the rush, Hiei? Have somewhere to be? Detectives to cavort with?"

The barest flicker of lime dusted the edges of Hiei's Loom, his eyes widening a degree. Then he issued one of his rough, nightmare-fuel chuckles. "Think you're witty, girl?"

"More so than you give me credit for."

He rolled his eyes, but Michi didn't miss the slight crook at the corner of his lips, nor the cobalt—sharp as fresh-forged steel—that overtook his crimson in spotty patches. And as they rolled into the rest of their briefing, batting questions back and forth with clinical precision, the blue hung around, as if somehow, without quite meaning to, she'd impressed him enough for his ire to abate. At least a smidgeon.

A small victory, but one that pleased her nevertheless.

By the time she readied to depart, the afternoon hour had grown long, heavy shadows slanting beneath the park's trees, fissuring through the dying leaves and clawing scarecrow hands across the earth. Hugging her sweater tight, she said, "I'll make sure Asato gets a full report. If he has any questions, no doubt Genkai will relay them to you when you see her next."

"Hn." He stood with an animalistic grace, his muscles flowing like smooth water. "Be here next month. I won't bother with an annoying contact."

Meaning Asato.

But not her.

If she weren't so thoroughly bemused by his sudden change of heart, she might've mustered a response, but before she could summon anything other than bafflement, his gaze tracked over her, a single sweep from the crown of her head to the toes of her brown boots. Then he huffed softly, shoved his hands in his pockets, and turned heel, stalking into the gathering night.

But before he disappeared, she caught his last words, muttered under his breath, sounding as flummoxed as she still felt: "The fox is a fool."

Then he was gone.

* * *

AN: Oh, Hiei, you prickly bastard.

I've never written a multi-chapter fic that isn't a Hiei pairing, and I have to say, it was delightful to write a character who is not charmed or drawn to him in any capacity. It's also intriguing to put him in a position of responsibility/authority and see how he handles it. All of which to say, this chapter sort of ran away with itself. That said, it starts to establish some important pieces, and Michi got more Kurama hints, so it most certainly isn't filler.

Thanks endlessly to everyone who reviewed last week: knightsqueen05, Star Charter, Addicted-to-GazettE, CrystalVixen93, E.V. Delacy, xXGemini14Xx, Dagdoth Fliesh, Aria2302. Every time I hear from one of you, it absolutely makes my day! Thank you, thank you, thank you!


	8. Dark Before Dawn

"Come over."

"Now?"

Shuichi's voice was soft as smooth flowing silk in Michi's ear, a direct contrast to the thunderclap roaring outside, loud as a detonating bomb. "The storm ruined our plans," he murmured, "but I'd still like to see you, especially in light of our conflicting schedules this weekend."

She pinched the bridge of her nose and tugged a pillow over her head to block out the fork of lightning fissuring beyond the window, its fluorescent brilliance illuminating the raindrops splattering against the glass in a rainbow of color.

Her head was collapsing. It had to be. Her skull caving inward, crushing her brain beneath its bone-white embrace. Nothing else made sense. Nothing else could hurt so atrociously, with such all-consuming dominance.

Except that wasn't true.

Not for her. Not thanks to her curse of a territory.

Impending thunderstorms always worsened the subway ride home. So many people feeling knotted, mustard anxiety at once overwhelmed her. There was no escaping it, no dividing her attention amongst other threads, not with pervasive worry about the impending downpour saturating every soul in her vicinity.

And today, when she'd left campus a few hours later than usual for a Thursday, she'd found the subway packed with that roiling, nervous mustard, made all the worse by a woman and her squalling baby. Infants lacked the emotional range of adults, but when they felt an emotion, they truly _felt_ it. They _became_ it. Their Looms lived and died within that one crux of feeling, every thread they possessed dyed in stark color.

That baby in her railcar had been consumed with fear. Anxiety had been too precise an emotion for its young brain, but the terror came in swathes of forest green so overpowering even the crush of mustard anxiety had seemed a blessed escape.

By the time she'd stumbled off the escalator at her stop, the world was spinning.

Her territory had sent her senses into a riot, the lot of them clamoring back against the Loom's onslaught, ratcheting to further and further levels of sensitivity until it was all she could do to crawl beneath her sheets and try not to sob.

Even now, the sensations were too much—her silken sheets felt rough as sandpaper, her every breath as loud as a gunshot, and even with the lights off and curtains drawn, each lightning strike brought tears to her eyes. Too much. Too much, too much, too much.

"Michi?"

She bit her knuckle, forced down a gulp of air, and whispered, "Sorry. I'm here."

"I know the storm is raging, but I have the apartment to myself tonight. Yusuke and Kuwabara won't be home until late. I could have dinner waiting when you arrive." A playful, teasing note of pleading entered his voice. "I don't want to wait until Monday to see you."

Monday.

Because he'd taken tomorrow as a vacation day, and she wouldn't see him on her commute home. Because her next visit to Genkai's shrine had at last come up, laying claim to her Saturday. Because his Sunday was occupied, an all-day work event whisking him away even on a weekend.

So they'd planned on tonight—and now she was a mess.

This time, her pause caused him genuine alarm. "Is everything okay?"

"I—" A particular riotous rumble of thunder tore a whimper from her throat.

"Michi?"

Only an effort of immense will convinced her vocal chords to obey, and even then, all she managed was an all too pathetic: "Migraine."

He'd never encountered one of her headaches before. The wonder of his Loom always managed to combat them when she was in his presence, like he was her own personal refuge free of the world's dazzling color. And for fear of unnecessary sympathy or—worse still—appearing whiny, she'd never mentioned them to him.

But now… Oh, now, she wished she'd told him before, because she most certainly didn't have the capacity to do so anymore.

His tone softened, so quiet and gentle it nearly faded away to nothing. "Let me come to you then. I'll bring food, distractions, medicine—whatever you need." When she gave no immediate answer, he said, "Only if you want that, of course."

She did.

Goodness, she did.

But he'd never seen her apartment before, and its current state was not the sort of impression she wanted to make. Not because of the clutter that had accumulated in her living room recently, ever since she'd started spending half her evenings out to dinner or exploring the city with Shuichi. The mess was its own problem, but it wasn't _the_ problem.

That distinction went to her psychic wards.

They were everywhere, plastered on every external wall. Old, brittle parchment taped above windows and against doors, black symbols slashing across their faces in the ceremonial ink Genkai kept specifically for the creation of wards.

Normally, if Runa and the girls or her parents or anyone with no knowledge of the occult were visiting, she'd spend a careful twenty minutes hiding the wards away, hanging pictures and paintings and wall coverings of all sorts until every last one was tucked from sight. They were less effective that way, the full potency of their spells partially obstructed, but at least they didn't invoke a thousand questions she couldn't answer.

But hiding them now? A near impossible feat.

A shame, then, that she'd been too slow in answering.

"Michi, I'm on way," Shuichi assured her, and the telltale rustle of cloth announced him pulling on his raincoat. "I'll stop for food. Be there in thirty minutes. Hang in there." Then, so soft and sweet and genuinely worried that it almost put her into a fresh fit of tears, he added, "Please."

She mumbled incoherent acceptance, the words to deny him too exhaustingly out of reach to fight for, and with a whispered goodbye, he hung up, the line clicking dead. In the ensuing quiet, she allowed herself one minute, just sixty precious seconds to muster up whatever measly strength she possessed, before writhing free of her comforter and compelling her feet to the floor.

The world wobbled as she stood, but it didn't matter. It couldn't matter.

She had wards to hide.

* * *

Twenty-seven minutes had passed, ticking by at a speed simultaneously breakneck and dawdling. Every step she took was a battle, the lot stretching into a war she was content to surrender, an hour seemingly crawling by with every shift of her footing. And yet, like the opposite side of the same coin, each minute passed in a mere heartbeat, rushing past, threatening to steal away her chance at hiding her nearly two dozen wards.

Somehow, she'd had the presence of mind to unlock the front door, managing to free the deadbolt with one hand while hanging a picture of Yurie and Nanako over a ward with the other. Only after desperately corralling the frame into some semblance of straightness did she stagger to the couch and sag into the cushions. Then, a groan heaving past her lips, she drew her knees to her chest, keyed open her phone, and texted Shuichi.

 _-My door unlocked. Buzz apt 3b. Tenant lets anyone in.-_

The worst grammar she'd ever sent him, but she made no attempt at correcting it.

How many more minutes slid into the void, she wasn't sure. Outside, the thunder grew more infrequent, but the rain still lashed against her windows, pitter-pattering like a stampede of wild mustangs, drilling holes into her skull.

Would Shuichi's company even help? What could he possibly do?

Already she was aware of new threads, the Looms of her neighbors leeching through her walls now that the wards were hampered. Flickers of gray exhaustion and aquamarine contentment bled across her vision, stabbing like knives. In the face of her heightened sensitivity, even Shuichi's threads might appear bright as the sun.

She should've told him to stay home. She should've made an excuse. She should've—

The door eased open, hinges near silent. A soft thud announced a pair of shoes being removed, wet swishing revealed a removed raincoat, and then the muffled padding of sock-covered footsteps drifted in from the entry hall. The corridor was only a few short feet back and to the right, nothing but a glance behind the couch needed to spot her visitor.

She couldn't manage it.

"Michi?" Shuichi pitched his voice with utmost care, her name carrying into the living room as if on the lightest of breezes, lofted to her on an updraft.

"In here," she mumbled to her knees. Her lips grated against her jeans with a ferocity that brought tears pinpricking to her eyes, and she lifted her head, desperate to create space, to alleviate the rough ache on her smarting nerves.

Each of Shuichi's whisper-soft strides rattled between her ears, echoing over and over and over until he paused once more. He remained somewhere to her right, probably stationary on the threshold, surveying her apartment in that way of his, calculating appraisal ticking away behind his composed gaze, reconciling the innards of her sanctuary with whatever he'd imagined this place to be.

Then he drew closer. His hand curled over her shoulder. Squeezed once, tight as a clamp. A kiss grazed across her forehead, right at her hairline.

It could have been a knife, it cut so acutely.

Circling around the couch, he set a series of bags on her ottoman, his deft hands keeping the paper from crinkling too nastily. He withdrew a neatly packed box of sushi, enough for two, if not three, then extracted the assorted paraphernalia necessary for takeout. Throwaway chopsticks. Soy sauce packets. Napkins. Until a veritable pop-up restaurant had unfolded on the footrest.

As he moved to the next bag, his green gaze slid upward, analyzing her through the fall of his scarlet hair. Even through the gloomy darkness, she could tell his smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "I wish you'd told me sooner," he said, still at the perfect volume, low but audible, as soothing as any sound could manage to be. "Preferably _before_ I hounded you to visit."

Her eyes fluttered shut against a flash of lightning beyond the curtains. "You call asking once a hounding?"

She'd meant for him to laugh.

He didn't.

A crackle of paper and rattle of pills announced the next purchase he set upon her ottoman. When she cracked an eye back open, she found him emptying the final bag, a tub of ice cream in hand.

At her quizzical frown, he hefted the carton, wagged it back and forth, then rocked upright. "For later. A bit of comfort might be in order."

"Thank you—"

"None of that," he said as he rounded the couch once more, headed for the kitchen. "No thanks tonight."

She wanted to fight him on it. Gratitude was more than necessary. He'd trekked through the downpour, procured dinner, complete with offerings of ice cream—all so he could witness her at her worst, curled into a weepy, useless ball on the couch. But in the end, her silence held as a hiss of cold air publicized the ice cream's placement in the freezer and the burbling of the faucet foretold Shuichi's return with a glass of water.

He shook out three pills and passed them off to her, then eased the glass into her hands. Here was another battle not worth staging. Shuichi couldn't possibly know it, but medicine—over-the-counter, prescription, or otherwise—never eased her thread-induced headaches. Still, it was easier to accept the offered pills and water than try to formulate an excuse for not downing the jumble in a single gulp.

Crouched at her side, knees bent, arms crisscrossed atop his thighs, he lifted a forearm and traced one long finger down the curve of her exposed wrist. "Hungry?"

She rocked her head sideways.

His finger stroked back the way it had come. Soft. Soothing. "We'll eat later then. For now, is there anything else I can assist with?"

It took her a moment to realize his Loom was no brighter than usual. Still muted. Still seen as if through a gauzy veil, a bolt of bright cloth that had found its way into a load of bleached whites, gone washed out before that brunt of chemical strength. Her territory clung to it, settling against its soothing shades like a second home.

If she had to pick a name for the color billowing through his threads, she might settle on pine, an evergreen bristling with needles. Not so far off from the usual forest green of worry—of fear. A pink tone twined beneath that, so light it was barely discernable. His take on coral concern?

She shifted, her wrist rolling over, her fingers catching his. "I'm okay. Promise."

"No need for valiancy on my behalf."

Her best efforts proving immaterial, a sigh escaped between her teeth.

His brow creased. Worry bled deeper across his Loom. "Michi, please. Let me help you."

Well, no hiding now.

"I could use pajamas, maybe." Anything better than her jeans and blouse. She'd donned them this morning, her imminent date with Shuichi in mind, but now they were suffocating, chaffing and clawing and rubbing her nerve endings raw.

She could practically hear his calculations as he ran through them, his focus darting down the hall, then back to her, then down the hall again. A quick check of her bedroom's presumptive location. A tally of its distance from the couch. A scrutiny of her mobility. A cost-benefit analysis of trespassing in her room unsupervised.

The conclusion he arrived at came as no surprise.

"Of course." He unfolded with a fluid grace not unlike Hiei's. A jungle cat on the prowl. "Where might I find—"

"Foot of the bed." The drumming behind her eyes somehow notwithstanding, a flush rose in her cheeks as she admitted, "I was running late this morning. I didn't fold them."

A blip of blue through his threads proceeded his soft laugh. Then he curled the finger still clutched in her fist, tossing her what was no doubt meant to be a disarming wink, one to prove he was unworried and so she could be, too—but as always, there was no deceiving her territory.

And as she released him and he slipped down the hall, his apprehension went with him, a cloak hung about his shoulders, as sweltering and heavy as if it had been soaked in the downpour. Worry. Sympathy. Emotions she'd worked so hard to avoid, now inescapable.

* * *

"You know," Michi said, casting Shuichi a wavering smile, the best she could muster, "sushi is an… odd choice for migraine recovery food."

She sat cross-legged beside him, upright for the first time in hours, a plate of sushi cradled in one hand, chopsticks shakily held in the other. Shuichi had worn her down with a steady barrage of worried murmurs and soft touches, cajoling until she at last accepted dinner, but her stomach still roiled too wildly to warrant more than a handful of bites.

He picked through what she'd rejected, chopsticks roving like the beak of a woodpecker, darting and precise, filling his plate with a second round. "I wasn't aware there was a _right_ choice." His leg shifted, his thigh resting against her bent knee. Only in the last ten minutes had that light pressure become tolerable enough not to reduce her to tears. "Lacking better insight, I thought it best to lean into your college student tendencies."

A startled chuckle worked free of her throat.

One fine red brow rose. "Finally up for laughing?"

A half hour back, she'd let him draw open the curtains, allowing the hazy light of distant streetlamps to filter through the rain-streaked windowpanes. Now those lamps backlit him in palest gold, highlighting his profile as he popped a piece of sushi past his lips. He could've been a mirage, a trick of her pain-addled mind.

It seemed so impossibly perfect that he was here. That he'd sacrificed his night to sit with her in the silent, motionless darkness, nothing but the trickling rain to keep them company. That whatever had sprung up between them might mean even a sliver as much to him as it did to her.

Impossible.

And yet, somehow, actually happening.

"I can't believe you remember that dumb joke," she said, resting her dish atop the ottoman and twisting to face him.

His gaze tracked her hand, and for a moment, his lips thinned, his brow creasing, as if he were debating the merits of scolding her into eating more. In the end, he only shook his head, one short bob of disappointment, then set aside his own utensils. "You discredit my memory—and your comedic timing."

"Oh, I don't think so. I've got a solid grip on my ability—or lack thereof—to crack wise." A smile stole across her lips, and she prodded him with a toe before she even realized what her body was doing, poking at him as teasingly as if she'd known him forever, as if he were Asato obnoxiously sprawled across her couch rather than reserved, perfectly mannered Shuichi. At once, her foot thunked back to the cushion.

But none of the disgust she anticipated colored his threads in goldenrod.

Instead, he snagged her ankle, his hand curling tight. Almost too tight. Squeezing around her bones, pressing cool callouses against each knob and curve. Meant to be mischievous, she imagined. A quick retaliation for her toe's wayward jab. But his grip was strong. Too strong for a casual tease.

Near instant realization dawned in his eyes, their corners tightening, a bolt of lime zinging across his threads in startled shock.

One by one, his fingers loosened. Pointer. Middle. Index. His grip softened almost to nothing, and the surprise was gone from his Loom in the space of a heartbeat, steady aquamarine pooling in its place as he stroked a thumb across her anklebone—seeming for all the world like that had always been his intention. She'd have thought it a hallucination brought on by her headache if not for the smallest break in his voice when he next spoke.

"You know," he said, "I must admit I'm not a fan of your neighbor. The one who lets any old stranger into your building. Seems unwise and more than a fair bit risky."

"Well, just don't go telling any murderers, yeah?"

The soft hum he issued seemed discontented, thoroughly unsatisfied with her offered solution, but he needled no further. Instead, he leveled her with a gentle appraisal, coral now playing undeniably through his waxen threads. "These headaches… Do you get them often?"

"Relatively speaking." Though less so these days. Thanks to him. Not that she could tell him as much. Not properly, at least. But she could hint at it, in whatever small ways she could manage. She tipped her chin toward the capped pill bottle nestled amongst the remnants of their dinner. "The medicine seems to be helping though."

"That's a relief." He recalled his hand, and it flitted back to the safety of his lap, freeing her ankle entirely. She didn't miss how calculated the move was. How strangely nervous.

Swallowing a sigh, she swung her legs beneath her body, hiding her offending toe from sight, desperately hoping to end whatever had unnerved him. The new position brought her closer to him, and she wasn't sure who closed the remaining distance first. Her curving into his side? Or him wrapping an arm around her shoulders?

"I'm thinking a movie—a quiet one—might not be the worst thing."

He chuckled, and it thrummed through her body, sending sparks dancing across her skin, wriggling up her spine. "Fair enough. What shall it be?"

* * *

As the credits rolled, Shuichi murmured, "Michi? You've missed the ending." And then, his features practically awash in pale lilac as she opened her eyes, he added, "The middle as well. And the beginning. I'd go so far as to venture even the title screen slipped you by."

A yawn caught her by surprise, and she clapped a hand over her mouth before he got a good, long look at her tonsils. At some point—though she'd like to think not as early as he suggested—she'd drifted off, her migraine giving way to a bone-weary tiredness that pulled her under. And at some unknowable moment after that, she'd slipped downward, pulling a pillow into Shuichi's lap and giving in to the exhaustion entirely.

Now, his thumb stroked her temple, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. In the weak light of the scrolling credits, his teeth flashed like pearls. His smile warmed her all the way to her toes.

"I'll admit, I'm in need of a visit to the—"

"Oh, goodness." She lurched upright, nearly knocking the crown of her head against his chin, an accident avoided only by virtue of his quick reflexes. "Go. I'm sorry."

His brand of steely blue amusement flickered across her vision. To her immense relief, her senses remained blessedly unriled. Sleep had burned off the last clingy vestiges of her headache, it seemed.

"Hardly an emergency." His eyes twinkled. "Though I appreciate the concern."

She fidgeted as he rose and strode for the bathroom, plucking at loose threads in the seam of her throw pillow. Had she put away her curling wand that morning? Picked up the bra she'd flung aside the night before? She couldn't remember, and she tossed a hopeless prayer to whatever deity might be listening—be it from Human World, Spirit World, or other. Any god would do as long as they kept her unmentionables out of Shuichi's sight.

It turned out, however, that was not quite the right sort of prayer.

As the rush of the sink's faucet faded and the door creaked open, Shuichi called, "Michi? What's this?"

She craned around in time to see him rap a knuckle against the bathroom door, squarely over the center of a dry, crackling piece of parchment. An unhidden, unobscured, blatantly obvious piece of parchment. Complete with a swirling character painted in black ink. The strangest, most absurd wall decoration any reasonable college girl could possibly lay claim to.

A psychic ward.

Her stomach bottomed out, and all at once, her headache returned in force. Or maybe that was just her heartbeat pulsing in her temples, as fast and furious as a jackhammer.

"It's a… silly thing. My cousin put it up." Her feet found the floor. Carried her to him. Of their own accord, her hands rose and pried the ward from the door, the parchment tearing in the process.

Shuichi tilted his head. Questions churned in his eyes. "Seems a shame to take it down."

"No, I've been meaning to. Thanks for reminding me." The justification tripped off her tongue, ringing desperate and strange even to her own ears.

He hesitated, unvoiced queries still hanging between them, then freed the torn corner of the ward from its taped trappings and gently pressed the scrap into her hands. "In case you change your mind," he said by way of explanation.

Not that she could. Torn as it was, the seal possessed no power. Now it was no more valuable than the old paper it had been drawn across. Little more than trash.

She suppressed a sigh. Yanking it down had been… impulsive. A panicked bid to wrench it just as thoroughly from his memories. But at least she was headed to Genkai's on Saturday. She could request another from the psychic then—even if the entreaty would earn her the woman's annoyance.

The brush of Shuichi's hand along her jaw startled her, and she held motionless as his fingers slipped into her hair. His kiss was fleeting, here and gone all too soon.

"I'm afraid I must go. Work and an early morning await."

Oh.

It shouldn't have surprised her. It was late, and unlike her, he hadn't enjoyed an unplanned nap. Yet she couldn't help asking, "I thought you had tomorrow off."

"I do. My engagement is more a favor for a friend, I suppose."

A favor for a friend. So unspecific. Which must mean a friend she wasn't familiar with. Not Yusuke or Kuwabara. He had so many mysteries left to uncover, so many facets to overturn.

But not tonight. Not right now.

She pressed back against the wall as he moved to the entry hall, then trailed in his wake, pausing in the doorway to watch as he slid into his rain jacket and slipped on his shoes. "Thanks, again, for tonight. You hardly needed to—"

He silenced her with only a look, his eyes flashing equal parts amused and stern, lilac and navy twining in his threads. Flirtation and determination all tangled up in one another.

"Next time, I hope I won't have to pry the truth out of you. Tell me when you're hurting. No need to suffer alone." He twisted the doorknob and stepped over the threshold, then turned back. The flash of his smile did unforgivable things to her heart. "Good night, Michi."

And as the door clicked closed, silence enveloping her in its dark folds, she whispered it back.

* * *

AN: So this chapter's an important one, I think. Michi often thinks about why she wants to escape her territory, and hopefully this makes clear that she's not whining without reason. I imagine many of us would be ecstatic to have some sort of superpower/territory/psychic ability, but my favorite part of devising any magic system is exploring its downsides—and for Michi, her territory comes with no shortage of negatives.

That said, I loved exploring this dynamic between Michi and Kurama. Of the gang, I'm not sure who I'd want doting over me more when I was sick, Kuwabara or Kurama—though I have to imagine Kurama probably has the superior bedside manner, haha.

You all blew me away with your reaction to last chapter! The warm reception was doubly wonderful because it was probably my favorite chapter posted through the first seven. Between getting to write Hiei and having a chance to drop more breadcrumbs, it was a blast to write. Huge thanks to everyone who reviewed: knightsqueen05, Star Charter, arhi, Guest, ballet022, CrystalVixen93, Aria2302, ovenfreshh, WistfulSin, and ahyeon!

To Guest: Hiei was implying that it's Asato who annoys him, not Michi. And as for why he called Kurama a fool (if that's what you were asking), I'm afraid my lips are sealed for now. If/when Michi puts those pieces together, that's when you'll know!

(*whispers* One thing I want to say (because I know what I'd be thinking right now if I was reading instead of writing this fic), remember that not all narrators are reliable. Michi sees (or doesn't see) what she wants to. Perception is not always reality.)


	9. Seeing Scarlet

"I don't know how you take this train every month. It's not even dawn, Weaver." Slouched dramatically, his knees propped against the back of the seat in front of him, Asato clutched his head in both hands and muttered again, "Not even _dawn_."

"Well if you'd sleep instead of whine, you might find it's not so horrible. For both of us."

Without looking up, he jabbed an elbow Michi's way, jarring hers off the armrest. Then he heaved a groan. "It's impossible to sleep now. You realize you had us at the station a full half hour before we had to be there, right? And now you want me to sleep? Even though I've been up over an hour. Fat chance of that."

Giving up on her own attempt at a nap, she drew her thighs to her chest and rested her chin atop her knees. "Remind me why you're here?"

"Because I can't stomach another drive out there again."

"Yeah, I don't mean that. I mean, why are you _here_? Right now. Next to me. Ruining any semblance of this ride not being hell." She shot him her most pointed frown. "You could've taken a train later in the morning. You didn't have to torture me."

"Weaver," he said, solemn as death, "I don't think I like what this new boyfriend of yours is doing to your temper."

She rolled her eyes. "This situation—" she twirled a finger to indicate the train compartment "—has less than nothing to do with Shuichi."

"Well, I'm not sure I believe that."

"Oh, yeah? And why is that?"

"I'm guessing you could have been here, riding out to Genkai's shrine—"

"Hell camp," Michi interrupted.

Cobalt burst in the corner of her eye, amusement staining across Asato's steely exhaustion. "Don't let her catch you calling it that."

"Not planning to."

He grinned, lips twisting up at the left corner, lop-sided in that way that was so very _him_. "No more interruptions, Weaver. Let me put my theory out there, then you rebut. That's how court arguments are presented."

"This isn't court—"

Another thrust of his elbow. "No interruptions! Now, as I was saying, you could either be here, heading to the actual ninth circle of hell, brought to us right here on Earth, or—and here's the part I think you'll deny—you could be swooning over what's-his-name."

"Shuichi," she said despite her better judgment.

He flapped a hand, stifling a yawn. "Sure. Whatever you say. Point being, you're ticked you aren't smooching lover boy and you're taking it out on me."

"Wrong. On all counts."

"Nah. No way. You can't hide from me, Weaver."

And maybe she couldn't. Maybe he was right that she'd spent the last thirty-six hours thinking about Shuichi, wishing she'd given him a better goodbye, cursing their differing schedules. Maybe she was as love-struck as she'd ever been.

But that didn't mean she had to sit around and listen to him.

Quick as lightning, she hauled her bag from beneath her seat, slipped into the aisle, and darted up three rows to an empty pair of seats. Then she tucked herself against the window, lodged her bag on the cushion beside her, and turned her gaze to the landscape blurring beyond the foggy glass.

It took only a moment for her phone to buzz.

A particularly profane emoji awaited her, accompanied by three short words. _-You'll regret that.-_

* * *

From the train station, it was a twenty-minute hike to Genkai's endless staircase. No matter how many times Michi ventured out here, those stairs remained the most dreaded part of her trip.

The temple was in desperate need of an escalator.

Or a ski lift.

Hunching into a nipping breeze, Michi and Asato ducked out of the train station and trekked down the deserted road. A chill settling into her skin, Michi hugged her jacket tight. With every step, her bag thudded against her hip, its _thump, thump, thump_ far steadier than her heart.

Today, she'd have to tell Genkai about Shuichi. About his precious Loom. About all the secrets she'd been harboring for weeks now.

Knowing Genkai—not to mention her cousin—the revelations wouldn't be well received.

"So," Asato said, ducking beneath a tree branch hanging over the road's narrow shoulder and pushing it up, out of her way, "is it safe talking about the Detectives' investigation or are you going to plug your ears and ignore me?"

Since her meeting with Hiei, she'd tried to keep the case off her mind. Shuichi and the white threads aside, her territory hadn't seemed out of sorts. Spending every moment scouring the Loom of Life for abnormalities was a sure path to migraines and sleepless nights and hammering heartbeats.

But if the ex-Detectives had learned something…

"Have at it."

Asato sped up a tick and whirled to walk backwards, hands shoved in his pockets, seemingly confident in his reflexes' ability to keep him upright. Unlike her, he'd spent hours at Genkai's compound over the last five years, pushing his spiritual awareness, broadening the psychic skills his territory had awoken in him. Perhaps that training had advanced to a degree of precognition she didn't give him enough credit for.

But, as evidenced by the rock that caught his heel and sent him stumbling, she suspected that was _not_ the case.

Eyeing the stone he'd tripped over like it had caused him great personal affront, he said, "Right, so last we talked, they'd just started poking around, yeah? And I told you I didn't have much insight into what they'd dug up."

"Sure."

And then, weeks later, Hiei had hedged around a proper answer himself. Implying, at least in her eyes, that they hadn't turned up much at all.

"Well, turns out Genkai keeps a registry of psychics with a manifested territory. Apparently a whole slew of them have sought out the shrine over the years, kind of like me and the guys did back when ours first showed up."

Michi stepped around a rut in the path. "A registry?"

"It's not anything official, I don't think, but yeah, a running list of sorts. With as much identifying information as she could manage. Phone numbers. Emails. Residences. Whatever they offered up, she logged it down.

"And this helps the Detectives how?"

He jerked his hands from his pockets and smacked his left knuckles into his right palm. The resulting _thwack_ echoed off the surrounding trees. "Genkai sicced the whole team on those psychics. Gave them strict orders to hunt down every last one and confirm the status of their territory." His shoulders heaved into a shrug, his black coat distending with the motion. "It's not a comprehensive list, of course. I'm sure not every psychic in the area came to her for help, but it's a decent enough start."

"And…"

The gusto went out of him like wind escaping a sail, and just like that, he was a ship adrift as sea, no engine or breeze or current to guide him. "And nothing. The Detectives found them all. Tracked them, questioned them, and discovered absolutely nothing."

Which should have been good news. No more psychics losing control. No threat to their territories. No civilians getting hurt.

And yet magenta hung in thick ropes through Asato's Loom. Disappointment. Strong and clear. And a dash of crimson frustration, too.

"Shade, don't tell me you wanted whatever it was to keep happening." She halted, boots planted in the fallen leaves scattered along the road. "You can't be serious right now."

He winced. His dark gaze skittered from hers, and he buried a hand in his hair, the bleached strands tufting between his knuckles. "I didn't want trouble, Weaver, but—"

"But you wanted excitement. You wanted to be back in that world, not just working with the halfway house, but immersed in an actual case—like the one you helped with years ago." The one that almost killed him. The one that put him in the same hospital where she'd been, bed-bound and hampered by blinding colors and inescapable headaches.

"I hate when you sound like Mother."

She ignored the gibe. "This is a good thing, Asato. If those were freak incidents…" She bit down on her lip, realizing quite suddenly that she'd had hopes riding on the Detectives' investigation, too. Not because she wanted further involvement with Yusuke or Hiei or any of that, but because she'd thought it might be a chance at freedom.

A chance at normalcy.

Swallowing down the surge of disillusionment that nearly choked her, she finished, "If they were random occurrences, that's good for the world. It's good for all those psychics like you, who love their territories, who don't want to lose them, and, most importantly, who could cause severe harm if they lost control." She closed the distance between them and flicked him—just once—square in the temple. "Use that brain of yours, Shade, and realize that this is what we should have wanted."

His eyebrow ticked upward. "We?"

 _Oh_.

She'd put her foot straight in her mouth with that comment.

"Come on." She grabbed his elbow and leveraged him into motion. "We still have a million stairs to climb—"

He let her tug him forward, but not without repeating, "We. You said 'we.'"

"Shade," she warned.

"No, Weaver. You said it." Navy winked into existence in her peripheral vision, announcing his stubborn focus in a splash of color. Like a terrier hunting rats, he wouldn't let go now. "You're disappointed, too."

And neither of them needed to vocalize why.

They both knew it. On this, they'd never see eye-to-eye.

Staring pointedly at the toes of her boots, she asked, "How did you learn all this anyway?"

"I ran into one of the Detectives." A sheepish hand rose to the back of his neck. "Or, technically speaking, I found him on purpose. He owns a ramen cart. Name's Yusuke—"

"I know who he is."

His narrow eyes popped wide. "What? Since when?"

Had she really not told him yet?

Fiddling nervously with the zipper of her jacket, she filled him in, starting with finding Yusuke at Taki's, then detailing how she convinced him to let her handle the apparition's meltdown. She left out Shuichi and her own patronage of Yusuke's ramen stand, but she shared all the relevant bits, the slew of details that had yanked her even deeper into this world she wanted nothing to do with.

"Well damn, Weaver. You didn't think you should've mentioned this before now?"

She frowned at him sidelong. "That day was a bit hectic. For both of us." And since then she'd been avoiding it. Out of sight, out of mind—or so the saying went.

It hadn't quite worked.

"Cop out excuse."

"It was hardly some earth-shattering moment worthy of reporting. I haven't seen him since, and he didn't interfere further." She kicked a stone, sending it rolling into gulley. "It honestly slipped my mind."

A truth and untruth all at once.

After all, running into an ex-Spirit Detective hadn't brought the world crashing down around her. But that Spirit Detective being Shuichi's roommate? That nearly had.

Lucky for her, Asato was out of time to dig further. Ahead, a gap in the tree line emerged, and they hooked a right, the interminable ascent to Genkai's appearing between the dense foliage. After that, conversation fell away behind them, the battle to keep climbing far more vital than any game of verbal sparring.

And for once—just this one time—Michi didn't hate those stairs quite so much.

* * *

Around Genkai, Asato became a different person. All sharp bows and formal titles and stiff manners. Gone was the punky, street-wise kid who'd long since become her rock. In his place stood the young man her uncle had forged with meticulous care, welding him with discipline and disappointment and dogged determination.

Sometimes she wished he was always this Asato.

But more often—like that morning at Genkai's—polite Asato was enough to make her wish she'd taken Yanagisawa up on his offer to teach her a proper punch four years ago.

They'd arrived in time for breakfast, and at Genkai's barked request, joined her and Ryota on the wraparound porch for a sampling of bland rice and miso soup. Though she kept an eye out for him, Taki was nowhere to be found. She willed her imagination not to read into his absence, but it wasn't a battle she won.

Not that she had much time to dwell.

Asato made sure of that.

Throughout the meal, he maintained steady chatter, never allowing more than a moment of lulled silence. On its face, not problematic behavior. But once he started dragging her into the mix—still hours and hours too early for jovial conversation—he crossed a line.

As it turned out, she'd pegged Ryota just about perfectly based on his file, reading precisely the right details in the gaps between Hiei's abrasive descriptions. He was quiet. Respectful. Quick to startle. And—the piece Asato had forgotten—entirely not someone who needed to know a stitch about her personal life.

In the span of twenty minutes, Asato managed to drag her friends, her classes, and even her new apartment into the conversation, and each time, he refused to let her deflect. Niggling and pestering until she spilled particulars on whatever new aspect of her life he'd pulled into the light. A snake oil salesman with a silver tongue, his veneer of gentle manners never once cracking—at least to the naked eye.

But all the while, his threads danced with teal and navy, his stubborn determination bested only by his joy at her discomfort.

What she would have given to hook a solid punch square into his jaw.

She snagged his wrist as their impromptu breakfast broke up. Ryota drifted inside, murmuring quiet excuses and Genkai tramped into the yard, heading for a stretch of garden and barking for Michi to follow. Michi didn't obey. Not immediately.

With her hand curled into a fist in the front of Asato's shirt, she yanked him close. "If you drag me into conversation one more time, I'm going to make you wish you'd never introduced me to Genkai."

He snorted and pried her fingers open. "Oh, Weaver, how cute. Trying to threaten me." Leaning forward, he stuck his face directly in hers, his nose jutting into her own, his black eyes so close she couldn't see them both at once. "I'm going to win this round. You don't stand a chance."

Jerk.

Huffing, she pushed past him and loped after Genkai. The crunch of leaves at her back announced Asato trailing in her wake. By the time she reached Genkai, he was right at her side, but he kept his feet as she settled cross-legged into the dying grass.

Genkai eyed him, gaze flinty and unimpressed. "Kido, unless you've something to report, clear out."

"Oh, but I do, Master."

Michi pressed her lips into a thin line, fighting the urge to roll her eyes at his rigid, perfect posture and modest tone. Such a faker.

To her endless credit, Genkai gave him no quarter, his deference rolling off her like water off oil-treated cloth. "Then spit it out and get gone."

Asato did as bidden, and the utter glee in his threads gave Michi only a moment's warning before he looked her square in the eye and announced, "Michi's got a boyfriend."

Genkai went very still, nothing but her muddy irises tracking from Asato to Michi. Her voice was like the dry crackle of dead leaves. "Hadn't you always preached what a violation that would be, girl? I remember far too many nights of you bemoaning your romantic future—"

Attention locked on her bone-white knuckles, Michi interrupted, "He is _not_ my boyfriend. It's nothing that official." Then she shot her dirtiest glare Asato's way. "You're not the saint you pretend to me."

"Don't pout at me because _you_ have a secret boyfriend, Weaver. And besides," he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and sauntering backward toward the shrine, "I told you you'd pay for this morning."

"Kuroki."

Easy as that, Asato's digs were the last thing on her mind.

Genkai was studying her, her chin tilted downward, those hard eyes of her as stern and unyielding as Michi had ever seen them. The old psychic folded her leathery, wrinkled hands in the valley of her lap and allowed her threads—emerald as Shuichi's eyes—to speak for her.

It was Genkai's favorite card to play. Expressionless face. Closed lips. And yet a tapestry of unspoken communication for Michi to decipher.

In the beginning, it had been a test, a means by which Michi was intended to hone her skill at reading the Loom of Life. She'd never quite understood the inner workings of it, but somehow Genkai allowed herself to be consumed by specific emotions, manipulating her own psyche through techniques Michi didn't attempt to comprehend. Over time it had evolved past a mere teaching trick, morphing into their own strange, half-silent brand of dialogue.

And now, all that emerald curiosity was demanding answers.

So Michi started at the beginning. "I met him on the subway, seven or eight weeks ago. He was my seat partner. I…" Her hands twisted into knots. "I tried to read his Loom. For practice. You know, blocking the rest out and focusing on just one Loom. Like you told me to. But I couldn't find it."

Lime surprise rippled into being.

"I did eventually," Michi continued. Her nails dug into her palms, imprinting crescent moons across her flesh. "It's… I'm not sure how to describe it. Muted? Waxen? The colors are all washed out. His shades don't mean the same things that yours do. It's like the saturation is all wrong."

Pure emerald was back.

For normal people, such absolute emotion wasn't possible. Even when consumed by rage or love or exhaustion, other feelings always flickered at the edges. Black anger usually came hand-in-hand with crimson annoyance or rusty bitterness. Indigo love tended to tangle with lavender affection and aquamarine contentment. Steely gray fatigue often bore markers of buttery boredom.

But when Genkai played this game, she banished all else, influencing her Loom with a precise dose of spirit energy combined with steadfast will and impossible control.

It was… unsettling.

And yet, unlike many concentrated emotions, Genkai's threads rarely induced headaches. Measured as they were, without all the static of secondary feelings muddying the weave, they were nearly as soothing as Shuichi's exquisite Loom—though Genkai herself didn't make for remotely as pleasant company.

Biting her lip, Michi plucked a piece of grass and shredded it, sliding the edge of her nail through the thin vein at the blade's center. It came apart like fragile confetti in her fingers. "After that first day, I kept seeing him on the train and I tried to work out how he did it, but I couldn't make sense of it. Then, at some point, we started talking, and I stopped trying. I didn't want to turn him into a puzzle, not when he was so… charming. And kind. I like him, and I couldn't bear to mess that up." The grass fluttered to the dirt, hopeless flecks lost within a vast green sea.

Twin ropes of crimson and rust lashed through Genkai's Loom, conveying scorn, irritation and cynicism in deft bolts of color. In part, no doubt, because charismatic young men were about as noteworthy to Genkai as Michi's psychology homework was to Asato, but also, almost certainly intended as a sign that the psychic disapproved of Michi's secret keeping.

Still, it would take far more than muddy, scarlet threads to make Michi regret that choice.

If she'd come to Genkai back in those early days of knowing Shuichi, he'd have become nothing more than an experiment—a new form of training. The cynical old woman would have seen him turned into a lab rat, a series of endless tests to explore the bounds of Michi's territory and bolster her ability. A means to an end. No emotions—at least, none of Michi's—relevant to the decision.

He wouldn't have been her haven.

He'd have been a fresh hell.

"I'm not going to apologize for it," Michi said. Simple. Firm. And unflinchingly true. "He makes me feel normal. Or nearly so. I'm not willing to jeopardize that."

Judging by the ire in the thin press of Genkai's lips, that had been the wrong answer, and it seemed they'd reached a point of contention that required too much finesse for wordless emotion to communicate, because the uneasy presence in the air that always accompanied Genkai's manipulation of her Loom fell away. In its absence, Michi squirmed.

"Do you want to _be_ normal, Kuroki? Or simply _feel_ normal?" Genkai's hard-worn hands unclasped, roving forward to grip her knees as she leaned closer. At this distance, Michi could make out every pore in Genkai's leathery skin, every scar and imperfection, but none of that mattered compared to the unyielding iron in her glare. "You've known this man how long? Two months? Are you so confident in his permanence in your life that you'd throw away a chance at further understanding of your territory on the wild hope he sticks around?"

Ouch.

Michi couldn't hide her wince, and Genkai pounced on that flicker of weakness with all the viciousness of a prowling tiger.

"And if he does became a fixture, what then? Will you tell him what you are? Will you reveal how brazenly you intrude upon emotions better kept private? How you witness every spark of hidden anger, every second of muted annoyance? How, if he comes to love you, you'll be aware long before he voices it himself?"

This was death by a thousand arrows. A careful, targeted shredding of her conscience. A barrage aimed at each fear and insecurity Michi had confided in Genkai since coming under her tutelage.

Five years ago, after living three months at the shrine, Michi had returned home only to discover she no longer knew how to exist in the real world, how to integrate into society—how to do anything more than tread water amongst an ocean of emotions she couldn't block out. In the mountains, she'd had only the threads of Genkai, the kindly apparition Yukina, and—on the occasions he managed a visit—Asato to contend with. Just three Looms to navigate and process.

In Mushiyori, the Loom of Life proved inescapable.

But the bombardment of colors flooding her vision from the moment she woke to the second she slept was not the worst of it. That honor lay in her newfound inability to make any sort of human connection. Forget new friendships, let alone dating. How could she be herself when she knew the precise moment she hurt someone's feelings or invoked irritation or—somehow worst still—lulled them to boredom? How could she date a guy when she witnessed how much—or how little—he cared about her?

And as much as all of that hurt, it had nothing on the guilt that ate away at her, gnawing holes through her gut each time she glimpsed the emotions writ upon a stranger's Loom. So invasive. An unforgivable violation of privacy. One she couldn't control, but no less indefensible for that truth.

With family or Runa and the girls, she could almost rationalize it. After all, even without her territory, she knew Asato hid disappointment in one-shoulder shrugs and that Yurie's over-bright tone always disguised anxiety. But body language and inflection had far less meaning amongst strangers. Their innermost workings should have been safe, but with her, no emotion was ever sacred.

And here was Genkai, throwing all that in her face.

Fidgeting, Michi busied her fingers with a fresh blade of grass, tying it into knots as tight as those in her chest. "I can't read Shuichi with nearly that much detail. Sometimes I'm even able to forget his Loom is there at all."

"And that's enough for you, is it?"

She wanted it to be. Oh, how she wanted it to be.

But it wasn't.

Nothing would be enough until her territory closed for good.

That didn't change her stance on Shuichi, though. Ever since her territory manifested, not a stitch of her life had been as simple, as black and white, as Genkai's question suggested. It wasn't that _easy_.

"I won't make him some unwitting test subject."

Crimson and rust reasserted themselves in Genkai's Loom. More derisiveness. More disdain.

But Michi wouldn't be so easily cowed. Straightening, she tossed aside the knotted-up grass and said, "If we keep seeing each other, I'll tell him the truth. When the time is right. Then we'll go from there."

Navy determination snaked across Genkai's threads, and once coupled with the parting of her lips, it was clear she intended to push further, but Michi shoved to her feet before that argument could manifest. Time to cut this 'training' session short. Before it got any more unbearable. Swiping her hands across her butt, she scanned the empty clearing. "So where's Taki? I'd like to see him while I'm here."

Goldenrod unfurled, eating away at the existing navy and scarlet, but Genkai stood without a word. Lifting a beckoning hand, the psychic stomped toward the shrine. The rigid set of her shoulders filled Michi with an icy dread.

Rubbing the goosebumps rippling across the back of her arms, Michi gave chase.

* * *

Taki's room was tucked in the back of the shrine, a dozen feet down from the bedroom that had once been Michi's. Paused in the hall outside, Genkai knocked, two sharp raps of her knuckles announcing her presence.

The only answer came as a grunt. Stiff and unwelcoming.

Genkai stepped aside, allowing Michi to take the lead. Urging her hand to stay steady, she pushed the door back on its track. Tendrils of a headache sputtered to life behind her eyes in the space of a single breath.

She knew before she even spotted him hunched in the corner, head in his hands. She knew before she crossed the threshold. She knew the very moment the door creaked open.

The white threads in Taki's Loom weren't just present.

They were worse.

* * *

AN: Not going to lie, Asato and Genkai absolutely ran away with this chapter. When I first sat down to write this, I envisioned the entirety of what this chapter became as nothing but a single opening scene. Turns out, Asato was having none of that. But I think important pieces of the plot ended up established, so I'm not complaining! I hope it was enjoyable.

It was also fun to explore more of the drawbacks Michi feels her territory causes. Personally, I can't imagine how difficult the life of an empath would be. Sure, in theory you'd be able to connect to people easily, but you'd also know every intimate facet of their emotions—and that could get messy awfully fast.

Thanks oodles to everyone who reviewed last chapter: knightsqueen05, ballet022, WistfulSin, CrystalVixen93, o-dragon, ALRose, Guest, Aria2302, and ahyeon. Hearing all your theories will never get old!


	10. White Wash

"Why didn't you tell me?" Michi whispered into the quiet.

In the confines of Taki's dark room, even her hushed words reverberated with the grating intensity of a shout. The white threads were everywhere, snaking insidious filaments through the mottled complexity of Taki's Loom, twining through black rage and mauve sadness and pink regret. Like forking lightning, they thrashed pervasively, blinding in their purity.

At her back, Genkai shuffled. "Tell you what?"

"That he's—" Her voice failed her, and she spread her trembling hands, helpless to explain.

"What do you see?"

"The white threads… They've spread." A description that did precisely no justice to the virulent threads writhing against her territory.

In the corner, Taki ceased rocking in place. His hands, once curled protectively over the back of his head, thudded into his lap, and his dull gaze flitted toward the door, drawn toward their stilted conversation. A feverish intensity gleamed in the gray depths of his eyes as his focus flicked and darted and strayed. To Genkai. To Michi. To his fists, covered in rocky stoneskin. Back to Michi. And on and on.

Even when he spoke, voice as rough as a landslide, he couldn't maintain eye contact with Michi for more than a moment. "Miss Kuroki?"

Her heart cracked near in two at the fear caught in the syllables of her surname, thrumming like an undertow dragging Taki below the waves. But it wasn't his terror that stirred her into motion—it was the hope nestled there, too, caught snug beside the fear.

A faith that she would help him. A faith that she would fix him.

A faith she hadn't earned.

Yet in the face of that trust, unfounded or not, she had to try. Never mind how woefully out of her depth she might be.

And so, step by step, she advanced into the room's gloomy interior, urging one foot in front of the other, ignoring the skittering nerves jumping in her pulse, the panic surging in the drumming beat of her headache. Her territory was screaming, protesting her every movement, pleading that she turn back, roaring—deep in her bones—that this was _wrong_.

That Taki was _wrong_.

But she refused to be swayed. He needed her, so she would be there for him. The end. No arguments allowed.

"Hey, Taki," she murmured as she reached him, proud no tremor found its way past her lips. Legs folding beneath her, she sank carefully to the floor and extended a steady hand.

His stoneskin was coarse and unforgiving beneath her palm.

The soft padding of slippered footsteps drew her attention back over her shoulder, and she found Genkai a few feet to her left, watching with critical eyes—ready in case something went awry. There was a certain comfort in the old woman's posture, in the tension hidden in her lean muscles, in the way she appeared ready to spring, like the hammer of a gun ready to fall.

Intervention— _safety_ —just a heartbeat away.

Unnecessary, but comforting nonetheless.

Turning back to Taki, Michi offered a smile and gently squeezed his hand. He dwarfed her so thoroughly that her fingers gripped little more than the heel of his palm, and combined with how minutely his rocky flesh gave beneath hers, the gesture was rendered practically meaningless.

Yet, even as she withdrew, his breath hitched, catching in his throat.

"I'm here," she said. "Talk to me. What's going on?"

Such a useless question. So mundane. So commonplace. As if she'd bumped into him at the corner store rather than discovered him here, falling apart at the very seams.

But, by the same token, maybe that was what he needed. After all, how isolated had he been these last weeks tucked away in the mountains, far from the friends he'd made, the life he'd carved out? How lonely must that have been?

For all Michi's jokes about hell camp and sadistic training, Genkai wasn't a cruel teacher. Not at her heart. Beneath her gruff growls and cutting honesty hid a woman who cared for her charges. Deeply and without reservation.

But she wasn't warm. She wasn't comforting.

Maybe that was what Taki needed. Someone to listen. Someone to hear him. Someone to _see_ him in the way that Michi was uniquely equipped to manage.

"I hate it," Take grunted, his stoneskin creaking as he straightened to his full height, his torso unfurling.

The surge of black across his Loom nearly made her afraid to seek clarification. "Hate what?"

His answer came as a snarl, as unflinchingly vicious as anything she'd ever heard. A noise that raised the hairs across the back of her neck. One so cold-blooded and enraged it made even Hiei at his most caustic appear cuddly.

"Everything. I have everything, Miss Kuroki. This world. The sunlight. These mountains. Me. You."

In the uneasy silence following that pronouncement, Genkai strode closer. At once, Taki stiffened, his eyeteeth flashing as he growled. Heeding his warning, Genkai went still.

"Michi."

That was all Genkai offered. A single word with a million meanings.

Worry rang chief among them, echoed in the mustard in her threads, and right on its heels, a stern command. One that said it was time to step back. To clear out before danger found her. To leave Taki in Genkai's calloused, capable hands.

Michi ignored all that.

"Can we have some privacy, please? Taki and I?"

"Now's not the time—"

Unbidden, Michi's left hand rose to her temple, rubbing soothing circles into the tension knotted there. Gritting her teeth, she twisted to face Genkai, begging with every fiber of her being for the woman to give her this chance.

When she'd first discovered the white in Taki's Loom, she'd thought he needed Genkai. She'd been convinced his troubles were far behind anything she could handle. And maybe that was still true. Maybe she was meddling in issues too complex for her rudimentary knowledge of the arcane to combat.

But if she could help—in any capacity—wasn't she obligated to give it a shot?

And if Genkai was serious about Michi mastering her territory, oughtn't she trust Michi to try?

It seemed Genkai understood those unsaid questions, and a flicker of understanding softened the hard jut of her chin. The signature navy of her stubborn determination gave way to a lavender Michi might've called affection under different circumstances.

Now, it almost struck of respect.

"You've got fifteen minutes." And, left unspoken, hung the rest of her sentiment. She wouldn't go far. Perhaps no farther than the corridor itself. If disaster reared its ugly head, she'd be there.

Michi responded in kind, half her answer delivered in silence. "Thank you." The wordless dip of her head communicated the rest. That she appreciated the backup, but it wouldn't be needed.

Then, lips set in a grimace, Genkai retreated to the hall. Only once the door clattered closed did Michi turn back to Taki. She found him unchanged, stoneskin still hard as granite, Loom sparking with rage as black as a starless night. Staring down the monster in his eyes, she summoned her kindest, softest smile—one to put Shuichi's gentle manner to shame—and reached for the demon's hand once more. "Tell me why you're angry. Tell me all of it. Every last, petty detail."

For a moment, it seemed he wouldn't. He sat still as the stone from which his flesh was carved, hardly even breathing. Rigid. Unyielding. Entirely closed off.

But then his jaws parted with an audible click. He began to talk. And once he started, he didn't or wouldn't—or _couldn't_ —stop.

* * *

Fifteen minutes quickly became thirty. Then sixty. And as early morning bled toward noon, Genkai's interruptions grew ever more infrequent, until, at last, the harsh thunking of her knuckles on the doorjamb ceased entirely.

All the while, Taki spoke.

About his anger, first. The deep-seated rage that smoldered in his gut at every turn. An ire that hissed dark thoughts in his mind, that told him he hated living amongst humans, that insisted he detested his mundane construction job, that decreed the kiss of Human World sunlight too vile to be tolerated. A sick, twisted wrath that professed his own soul weak and wretched and unworthy.

A fury that was tearing him apart. Piece by bloody piece. Day by horrid day.

Then, when even that insurmountable anger had burned down to coals, he spoke of the rest. The seething mire of emotions that had wracked him for days. Despair that he'd never see Demon World again. Bitterness that he'd ever agreed to come here. Irritation with Genkai and Ryota and every other soul tied to the halfway house.

Souls like Michi.

Only when his voice began to fail, his throat gone hoarse, did he touch on the confusion. In broken, wavering whispers, he revealed that those thoughts weren't his, that he loved this world. Or, at least, he thought he did.

He certainly had—once.

But he couldn't recall when that had been. Recently, surely. And yet when?

No matter how hard he tried, how deep he dug, those memories slipped away from him, recollections of happiness escaping his grasp as if they were no more than fog swirling between his fingers.

Michi listened to every word, silent and emotive in equal measure, responding as he needed, when he needed. Providing the ear he so desperately sought.

Through it all, she studied his threads. Even as she squeezed his hand, his stoneskin long since reverted to soft flesh, she catalogued and processed and analyzed. Not even the thundering headache clamoring behind her eyes could deter her.

The thrashing black had faded. Not entirely, but enough to make out the rest of his Loom more clearly. All that tangled crimson and rust and mauve and pink. A tapestry of hurt and pain and loneliness.

In the end, though, it was neither Taki's words nor his threads that put ice in her heart. And as she helped him into bed and tucked his hulking frame beneath his quilt, it was all she could do to keep from crying.

Because beneath all those writhing colors, his core waited.

Woven through it like the stain of toxic bleach ran thick ropes of vile white. A corruption so wrong, so wicked, she could hardly stand to look at it. A brokenness that threatened to break her in turn, to render her shattered and quivering and near catatonic right there at Taki's bedside.

Ultimately, she couldn't stave off tears forever, and once Taki's breathing dropped to the slow pace of deep sleep, the fervor with which he'd spoken having exhausted him despite the noonday sunlight beyond his curtains, she stumbled into the hall. No sooner had the door closed than sobs seized her, hard and fast and unrelenting, sending her crashing to the floor, her kneecaps smarting, the world spinning.

Genkai closed on her instantly, wrapping a wiry arm around Michi's waist, hauling her upright, anchoring her when her knees threatened to upend her once more. A heartbeat later, Asato appeared, fear threaded through his Loom in splotches of forest green. His arms encircled her, and her cheek found his shoulder, her tears soaking into his shirt.

But even still, even with the calming tenor of his voice in her ear, the sobs just kept coming.

* * *

It took nearly twenty minutes for Michi to grow steady enough to dare sip the cup of tea Ryota had kindly offered her. By the time she'd processed that the glass had come from him, he'd already ghosted away, dark eyes and lithe frame melding into the shadowed hallway. Now, seated at the kitchen table, feet drawn up onto her chair, knees pressed to her chest, she tried not to think about what she must have looked like. Bloodshot, swollen eyes. Smeared mascara. Red, puffy cheeks.

She'd always been an ugly crier.

No reason to think the after effects of today's meltdown would prove any different.

Across the room, Genkai paced like a restless beast, her hands clenched at the small of her back. Michi's recovery had worn her patience thin, and her exasperation stretched taut in glittering threads of crimson and goldenrod.

But it was Asato, leaning against the counter, arms crossed over his narrow chest, who broke the uneasy quiet. "Ready to explain, Weaver?"

She swallowed a pitiful sip of tepid tea and tried in vain to seize upon the right explanation, but whatever that justification was—if it existed at all—evaded her, and she settled instead for a whispered, "I'm sorry." She jerked her mug toward Taki's distant room. "About all that."

"Why the waterworks, Kuroki?"

Faltering and uncertain, the story tumbled forth. A recounting of Taki's emotions, raw and unfiltered. A report of his snarled threads. And finally, in a ragged murmur, a description of his core, white and broken and bone-chillingly perverse.

At those last words, Genkai ground to a half, stalling out like a car puttering out of gas. "Is that what you noticed earlier? When you said the white had spread."

Michi shook her head. "I didn't see it until the end. His Loom was too hectic before that. It obscured his core." Or she hadn't wanted to see that treacherous white. Perhaps she'd blocked it out, willfully and childishly ignoring that which she could not comprehend.

Which option was worse?

She couldn't be sure.

Asato heaved a sigh. "What I'm hearing is that he doesn't want to be here. That he wants to return to Demon World. We can arrange—"

Michi cut him off. "No. He made it clear he doesn't want that. Not truly. That's why he's confused. He can't make sense of it. Of why he's so…" She trailed off, uncertain how to conclude.

"Unhappy," Asato supplied.

She shrugged. It was as good a word as any. After all, Michi doubted any mere phrase could capture the depth of Taki's pain. Words lacked the needed clarity, the extent of feeling only his Loom could convey.

"You haven't explained the fit you threw," Genkai said flatly. Her tone brooked no deflection. She wanted answers, and she would have them.

Even if they weren't answers Michi knew how to give.

"The white… hurts," she said slowly, striving for some semblance of an explanation. "It feels like it's shredding my territory in half. Or like it's trying to suck me in and ruin me, too." Biting the inside of her cheek, she jammed the heels of her hands against her eyes, desperate to seal out the Loom of Life for one precious second. "I couldn't stand it. I couldn't—"

A new sob bottled up whatever else she might have tried to say, but before tears could claim her in full, a quiet cough drew her attention to the doorway. Ryota stood on the threshold, hooded gaze somber, shoulders slumped, a battered rucksack in hand.

He shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other, looking first at Genkai before his dark eyes honed in on Michi. "Our train leaves in forty minutes, right?" Then, nervously, the mustard in his threads indicating his dread at the response he anticipated, he added, "Unless we're delayed again."

Genkai huffed. "No, it's time." She gestured Michi onto her feet with a jerk of her wrist. "Get up, Kuroki. We've a transfer to complete."

* * *

The train to Itomori was an old, rattling contraption, nothing like the streamlined vessel that had carried Michi and Asato out to Genkai's shrine. As it jarred and lurched down the rails, she ached to pull her phone and earbuds from her bag and fit them into her ears, sealing out the world behind a crush of soundtracks and movie scores, but with Ryota seated at her side, hiding wasn't an option.

Her one reprieve was the relative emptiness of their compartment. Out here, deep in the mountains, the railcar was all but deserted. Compared to the blinding intensity of the Mushiyori subway, the colors here—composed only of Ryota's Loom and that of a wizened old man four rows up from them—were easy enough to stomach. Or they would have been, if she weren't still reeling from the onslaught of Taki's riotous hurt.

This ride was a short one, a mere thirty minutes, but filling the silence seemed an almost insurmountable task.

Eventually, Ryota summoned words where she could not. "Will he recover?"

Michi's breath stuttered in her lungs. "Taki?"

"Yes."

"I… don't know. I hope so."

Ryota nodded, chin bobbing. His dark eyes were locked directly forward, the stark overhead lighting creating deep shadows beneath his heavy brow. Everything about him seemed cloaked in darkness, like he existed in a plane stuck in perpetual twilight. His dusky skin was made bleaker still by a grayish undertone, and his hair fell in a black curtain, further obscuring his coal-dark eyes.

Dark on dark on dark.

That was Ryota.

Thoroughly out of place on a train in remote Japan. And no doubt further out of place still in Itomori's quiet streets.

But he remained as gentle and reserved as she'd anticipated from his file. Given enough time—of which he'd have plenty in a town as sleepy as Itomori—that disposition would ingratiate him to the locals. He'd fit in, even if his appearance didn't.

Once upon a time, she'd been sure of the same regarding Taki, and for nearly three years, she'd been right. He'd lived a happy, contented life in the midst of a bustling human city, at home despite the strangeness of it all—the unbelievable absurdity of a demon living amongst humans as if he were one of them.

Now, that might all be behind him. If Genkai couldn't make sense of what was happening to his Loom, Taki may never be permitted to return to his cozy apartment in Sarayashiki. Unpredictability was a problem the halfway house couldn't be lenient on. Spirit World governance wouldn't allow it. The success of the transplant program thus far was predicated on the confidence with which Genkai could forecast the behavior of their transfers. Unsettled as he was, Taki was an unknown.

And unknowns couldn't be trusted. Not when hundreds—if not thousands—of human lives were at stake.

"You are not a good liar, Miss Kuroki," Ryota said, voice soft as the beating of a bird's wings. He glanced at her sidelong, those pitch-dark eyes appraising and evaluating, seeing more than he'd first let on. In his threads, she spotted flecks of emerald curiosity, but the navy of determination was more prominent.

And a dash of mossy anticipation, too, for good measure.

Her eyes shuttering against the bright colors of his Loom, she pinched her nose and willed away the dredges of her headache. "Please, call me Michi. No need for formalities."

"Taki calls you—"

"Taki is stubborn." She rolled her head to the side, gifting him with a smile she managed to yank to her lips. "Michi will do." Then she hesitated. Her fingers knotted in the hem of her shirt. "Did you speak with him often? Taki, I mean."

"A bit in the beginning. He spoke highly of you." The demon's mouth bowed into a frown. His somber features grew more clouded still. "Less so in recent weeks. He became withdrawn. Sullen."

Much like she'd seen him today. A shell of the kindly creature he once was.

She needed a change of subject. Something that wasn't Taki. Something that didn't make her heart feel as though it were cracking in two. "I'm sorry about the delay. I hope the wait wasn't unbearable."

Ryota's gaze returned forward. "I enjoyed it. This world is much as Hiei had promised. Light. Airy." A crease furrowed across his brow as he searched for his next words. "It's alive. And… bright."

Oh, it was bright.

Bright as the sun. Bright enough to leave her reeling. Bright and blinding and inescapably awash in color.

But then again, Ryota wasn't talking about the Loom of Life.

"How does Demon World differ?"

Ryota fidgeted, his placid calm breaking for the first time. "I don't mean to disparage my home, Miss— Michi. I'm sure I will always miss the village where I grew up. But Demon World is a harsh place. Ruled by power and strength and blood. For those of us too weak to keep up, there are few havens."

Michi shivered, a cold seeping deep into her bones. She rubbed her arms, stiff fingers gliding over tense gooseflesh. If Ryota noticed her disquiet, he gave no indication.

In her time shepherding apparitions into new lives, she'd gathered as much as he'd said about the harsh nature of his home world, but no matter how many tales of Demon World's brutality she heard, the sickening unease that woke in her belly never seemed to lessen. She couldn't imagine an existence in which every day was truly life or death, a reality in which the ability to kill more efficiently than your neighbor was the only think keeping you alive.

In light of an upbringing like that, she could almost forgive Hiei his rough edges.

After a beat, Ryota continued, "The colors at home are different. Duller. More irregular. Our forests are not so vibrant." He glanced beyond the window to her left, studying the foliage blurring past. The trees had gone scarlet and gold with the season, their leaves spiraling to the forest floor on a steady breeze. "I think I like that difference most."

"Is that what Hiei promised you? The colors?"

"Yes. And no. Mostly, he spoke of sprawling cities where humans clamor and mill and thrive in calamitous harmony. But he also talked of remote villages where people resided their entire lives, never once leaving, forever surrounded by family, by their offspring and their offspring's offspring. That's what I want. A life that stable… A future already foretold."

A reasonable desire considering the ruthlessness with which his old life had been torn from him.

But what he described… It wasn't what she'd expected of Hiei. In all their encounters, he'd always treated her—and her world at large—with nothing short of disgust. Maybe, though, she hadn't given him enough credit. Maybe she hadn't tried to see beyond what she'd wanted to see, the image of a vicious, brutish demon she'd first envisioned when Asato told her of the three planes. He'd been precisely what she'd anticipated his kind to be like, and despite the plethora of benign demons she'd met since—never mind lovely Yukina, who she'd actually become acquainted with first—she'd clung to that rough exterior he portrayed.

Sometimes, Hiei's ire felt like one of her few justifications for how desperately she wanted free of her territory.

Other days, like this wretched one, validation abounded.

But now, listening to the wonder in Ryota's voice and the reverence with which he invoked Hiei's name, she wondered just how grave an injustice she'd done the prickly fire demon.

Without meaning to, she asked a question that would have left Asato dumbfounded. "Have you met any of the other Spirit Detectives? Or, I suppose, the former Detectives?"

Ryota blinked owlish eyes at her, as if startled from a trance. "No. They wouldn't know _me_ , but I know of them. Most demons do." For the first time since she'd met him, exuberance lit in Ryota's features, the barest ghost of a smile flitting about his lips. Teal happiness wormed through his Loom, chased by ice blue pride, and he twisted to face her, his knees knocking against hers. "I've actually seen them though. From a distance only. Up on jumbotrons. But in person, nonetheless."

She ignored the jumping beat of her heart, striving for an even tone. "Oh?"

"I attended the first Demon World Tournament. It was an honor to witness." As he paused, seemingly gathering his thoughts, she swallowed down an unintended sigh. Just when she thought all of demonkind might not be comprised of malicious brutes, even one of the gentlest apparitions she'd encountered so far started singing the praises of violence. "Urameshi, Hiei, and Kurama all fought there. Their combat skills are legend. It was a marvel to behold."

Combat skills. Marvels. All bloodthirsty nonsense.

But there were useful bits to be gleaned between if she were willing to listen.

Urameshi meant Yusuke. And Hiei she knew all too well. But there was that other name again. Kurama. It shouldn't have surprised her. After all, she knew he'd been one of the Detectives. But its resurfacing still rankled at her.

Perhaps now was her chance to gather more pieces.

"Kurama?" she asked as the train wheezed around a bend in the tracks. Far ahead, visible only for a moment before the shifting angles cut it out of view, Itomori station flickered between the trees. "Which one is that?"

"Yoko Kurama. He's an infamous thief, renowned for his heists. A fox demon."

She startled. Her pulse drummed behind her eyes, her headache reawakening as she puzzled over the awe laced through Ryota's Loom. "A fox?"

His answer came as a wordless nod, and before she could press further, the train churned into the station, clattering to a graceless halt. In moments, the opportunity to dig deeper slipped away, left behind in the near-empty compartment as they deboarded and stepped into the afternoon sunlight.

A dirt road lay along the tracks, winding and wooded, and the golden light of lazy autumn afternoons filtered through the trees, dappling them both in warm, buttery yellow. Yet even here, in a forest so clearly alive, Ryota seemed more a shade of a person than a living soul.

An ache opened in her chest as she wondered whether he'd always been this way—or if it was a product of the war that had ruined his home.

How did one recover from that sort of hurt?

She hoped, however vainly, that a new life here might be a first step, that Hiei of all people had set Ryota on a path toward healing.

Still, even with her thoughts scattered, as she oriented herself and gestured Ryota to follow in her wake, Ryota's silent affirmation on the train kept niggling at her.

 _A fox._

Why did that seem so familiar?

* * *

AN: Next chapter, we'll return to interactions with the gang (including a female face we haven't seen before!), but I hope this interlude out at Genkai's shrine was enjoyable. Lots of plotty bits are at work here, and of course, more Kurama hints. I have far too much fun laying out breadcrumbs Michi doesn't know how to fit together.

HUGE thanks to everyone who reviewed this past week: La Femme Absurde, Guest, CrystalVixen93, o-dragon, Aria2302, ahyeon, KitsuneWho, and Star Charter! I adore you all!


	11. Navy Tide

"Michi Kuroki, meet Keiko Yukimura. Keiko, this is Michi."

Michi's nerves buzzed and fluttered as she dipped her head in greeting. "It's nice to put a face to the name."

Keiko's eyes widened marginally, lime flitting through her Loom as she shot Shuichi a startled glance. "I didn't realize Shuichi talks about me at all."

"Don't make a big deal out of it, Keiko," Yusuke said with a wicked grin, voice booming, attracting more than one look from passersby on the street. "You'll embarrass him. He's supposed to dig Michi, not you. You can't go around pointing out—"

"Oh, Yusuke, shut up," Keiko interrupted, jabbing an elbow his way. Head thrown back in laughter, he skipped out of reach and pranced across the sidewalk, drawing yet more stares.

The light press of Shuichi's fingers against Michi's arm stirred her forward, and she fell into step at his side as Keiko chased Yusuke down the street, away from the Sarayashiki subway stop. Sighing, he started in on an explanation. "Yusuke is—"

"A troublemaker." She snuck a smile his way, her hand finding his, their fingers threading together only momentarily before propriety got the best of her and she slipped her hand back into her coat pocket. "Don't worry. I put even less weight in his words than I do in a weather report." Pointedly, her gaze roved skyward, and his followed, lighting on the clouds gathered on the horizon.

His chuckle ignited sparks in her veins. "We were promised clear skies, weren't we?"

"So I'd thought. Seems we were duped."

"Only if you have faith in the meteorologist..." His tone left the statement open ended, and as she spotted Yusuke up ahead, Keiko's hand firmly clamped over his ear, yanking his head down to hers as she scolded him, Michi knew what he hoped she'd say.

"Good thing I don't, then."

And nor did she believe, even for a second, that Shuichi had any sort of interest in Keiko, no matter what Yusuke might jokingly imply. For one, she doubted the Ties That Bind would allow the Threadbrothers to betray each other so thoroughly. And for two, Keiko's name hadn't truly come up all that often. Only once or twice, in passing and always in conjunction with Yusuke's own. Hardly a sign of some long-hidden, illicit crush.

Shuichi nudged her elbow with his. It was nothing but the lightest brush of contact, and yet it sent her heart ricocheting against her breastbone, battering itself near senseless. "A relief, I suppose," he teased, "that you're not so easily mislead."

She tapped her temple and winked. "I've got a good head on my shoulders, don't you worry."

By then they'd drawn even with Yusuke and Keiko, and the punk had wriggled free of his fiancée's clutches. In the midst of the flowing foot traffic, Keiko stood with her hands on her hips, her chin raised stubbornly, her eyes flashing with unexpected fire. "I apologize for this jerk. Sometimes, I swear he's still fourteen."

In seconds, Yusuke's eyes had gone big and wide, a heartbroken pout turning him sad as a kicked puppy. "Aw, come on, Keiko. You know you love me."

Keiko didn't buy his act for a second. "Forget loving you. You're just lucky I don't kill you, Yusuke Urameshi."

From Shuichi's quiet smile and the threads of lavender affection strewn through all three of their Looms, Michi gathered this was usual behavior for the pair. Playful sparring that hid deep-rooted fondness. It was sweet, in its own way.

But it wasn't enough to quiet the humming of her frayed nerves. This was her first run in with Yusuke since she'd discovered him in Taki's apartment. Despite her best efforts, it had proven unavoidable. After declining Shuichi's invitation to spend an afternoon with his roommate three consecutive times, no excuse she might conjure up sounded believable anymore.

So here she was. In Yusuke's presence, elbow-to-elbow with Shuichi, anxiety roiling in her stomach not because of his proximity, but because of his Threadbrother and the secret he harbored on her behalf.

Logically, if Yusuke hadn't told Shuichi about her yet—and by all accounts, it appeared he hadn't—there was no reason to believe he'd do so now, in the middle of a crowded street. As far as she could tell, there was no indication that Shuichi or Keiko knew anything of his time as Spirit Detective. After all, Runa and Yurie and Nanako remained clueless about the source of Michi's headaches, and if she hadn't told the girls, then it wasn't so far-fetched to think Yusuke hadn't told his friends either.

Which should mean her secret was safe. That she didn't have to panic. That this afternoon was nothing more than a day spent with new friends—a double date, if that wasn't too preposterous to believe.

Theoretically, at least.

But it seemed her frazzled, unrelenting fretfulness had no interest in listening to theories—regardless of how sound they might be.

Fighting for levity, she surveyed the street, a hand rising in question. "So where is it we're headed exactly?"

Yusuke's puppy mask faded into oblivion, and he hooted with rowdy laughter. "The arcade. I want to see where all that money wasted on a college education has gotten you, Kuroki." Looping his hands behind his neck, he sauntered forward. "And I'm going to kick your ass!"

"Yusuke!"

"Ouch. Keiko, stop hitting me. I didn't mean it literally!"

* * *

The arcade Yusuke led them to was packed, flooded with teens and adults—and a smattering of children—alike. The dozens, if not hundreds, of machines in the dark place all featured long lines and squabbling onlookers, all clamoring to cut ahead and snag themselves a seat at the controls. Unintimidated, Yusuke marched toward the back corner, and in a matter of moments, secured their foursome a set of games, his swagger and bellowing clearing out a pack of kids who couldn't have been older than thirteen.

Michi distinctly heard them whispering about 'that Urameshi guy' as they melded into the crowd.

"You know, Yusuke," Keiko said, arms crossed in stern disapproval, "eventually you'll have to stop bullying the kids from Sarayashiki Junior High. You're not a student there anymore, remember? Being a punk is just criminal now."

"Yeah, yeah, Keiko. I've heard this lecture a hundred times." He tossed Michi a sly grin and thrust his hands toward a set of controls, then stepped up to the other button pad and shoved some coins into the machine's slot. "Show me what you've got."

It was some sort of street fighter game, all about caving your opponent's head in before they crushed yours. The kind that mostly looked like button mashing and joystick flailing to an outsider. And really, even once a player learned the right buttons for a combo, it was still just a matter of hitting them as fast and consistently as possible.

Not a play style she was much good at.

Though some might argue the game she played for Nordic Literature wasn't any different.

"I'm thinking we can consider my butt thoroughly kicked already—"

"No excuses, Kuroki! Get in here and let me wail on you." His grin was bright as an autumn sun, and his threads were filled with such electric teal that obeying his command seemed a less painful prospect than squinting in his direction for even a second longer.

As soon as her fingertips touched the control pads, Yusuke jabbed a button and the arcade machine loosed a stream of faltering music as twin fighters appeared on screen. At her back, she felt Shuichi and Keiko. Watching. Probably judging. But then Yusuke's character struck the first punch, and she lost focus on anything but keeping pace.

She matched him. Jab for jab. Kick for kick. And as his laughter rang across the arcade, she could almost imagine this was normal.

That he wasn't in possession of her deepest secret.

That he might not spill it at any second.

Almost.

* * *

"So, dating Shuichi, huh?"

Keiko's question, posed so innocuously and so disarmingly out of the blue, lit a scorching blush in Michi's cheeks. Startled, she lost track of her footing, the heel of her boot catching on a crack in the sidewalk. Only a quick windmilling of her arms kept her on her feet.

After two hours of games—in which Michi found herself thoroughly outmatched not just by Yusuke, but by Shuichi, too—the guys had gone off to scrounge up dinner, leaving Keiko and Michi outside the arcade, ostensibly with the task of scoping out a place to sit and eat. Except, considering the emerald playing across Keiko's cheeks in shining strands, it seemed the girl was more interested in posing questions than hunting for picnic tables.

But at the sight of Michi's flustered uncertainty, Keiko faltered. Silver embarrassment flushed through her threads. "Sorry. That was rather point blank, wasn't it?" She blew stray hair out of her eyes. "What I should have said is that Shuichi has never introduced us—or me, anyway—to a girl before."

Focusing on the toes of her boots, Michi slipped her hands into the pockets of her jacket, hiding her knotted fingers within the silken lining. Talking about Shuichi's past romantic entanglements hadn't been a topic she'd anticipated, and its sudden emergence set fresh fire to the anxiety that had at last calmed in her chest.

Yusuke may not have spilled her secret, but it seemed she hadn't yet escaped today unscathed.

 _Of course_ she hadn't.

And, again, apparently her face said it all.

As soon as the words left Keiko's lips, she clapped her hands over her mouth. "Gosh, I'm as bad as Yusuke today."

"No," Michi said quickly, summoning a smile. Even in the chilly night air, her cheeks felt as hot as miniature bonfires. "Shuichi and I haven't talked about—" her hands flapped around uselessly "— _that_ at all. You just surprised me. And, well, I'm not really sure what to say."

"Exactly! That's why I'm sorry. I shouldn't—"

Michi laughed. "It's fine. Seriously. Let's just start over."

Keiko nodded. Her Loom still gleamed silver, but as she sucked down a deep breath and tucked her hair behind her ears with methodical movements, the metallic shade lessened, giving way to simple aquamarine. "Right. Maybe you should ask questions. That might help me keep my foot out of my mouth."

Nodding, Michi turned over a thousand inquiries in a matter of seconds, testing each on her tongue, sifting until she found one that felt suitably revealing and innocent all at once. "You've known Shuichi awhile?"

"Ages."

They rounded a corner, and Keiko pointed out a small park across the street. Under the glow of awakening streetlights, a picnic table waited. Though the night had grown chilly, it remained unseasonably warm for late October, and the rain that had seemed inevitable two hours prior had never materialized. All things considered, a quick meal outside wouldn't be too unbearable.

As they crossed the street, Keiko pulled out her phone to text Yusuke their location, then added, "We met while Yusuke and I were still in junior high. I had to be fourteen, I think."

Long-time friends, then. Yet he'd never introduced another girl into their fold?

Then why Michi?

Why now?

But those weren't questions for Keiko. "And what about Yusuke?"

They reached the picnic table, and Keiko brushed fallen leaves from one of its benches before settling on the old wood and propping her chin in her hand. The wind stirred through her long hair, and she fiddled with the strands as a soft smile stole across her lips. Lavender bloomed through her threads, and on its heels came a deeper purple—the bluer tone of indigo.

Of love.

"Yusuke's been a thorn in my side for as long as I can remember." Despite her phrasing, this time, Keiko was the one blushing. "He's a loudmouth, but he's _my_ loudmouth."

Michi laughed—or tried to. She prayed its awkward edge went unnoticed.

Because as endearing as Keiko's affection for Yusuke was, it was equally alarming. From the way her voice softened when she talked about him, it was all too obvious how deep her care for him ran. And it hadn't been hard to spot a mirroring love in the way he'd teased her all afternoon. Beneath his jokes and inappropriate touches ran an undeniable fondness for the girl.

Which made Michi's hope that Keiko knew nothing of his ties to Spirit World far more tenuous than it had been a few hours prior.

Sure, Michi hadn't told Runa and the girls about her territory. But in the end, they were her friends, not her family or her fiancé of years and years. If the last months were anything to go by, it was hard to even know how long they'd remain truly close. In high school, their foursome had been bonded at the hip, but she saw less and less of the girls these days. It was her fault more than theirs, but that didn't change the truth of it.

When her territory manifested, she hadn't told them because she'd been terrified how their perception of her might change. That they'd think her a freak. Or an escapee from the psych ward where she clearly belonged. Or—the option that had gifted her many a sleepless night—that they'd prove unable to forgive her violation of their privacy, her constant breaching of the sanctity of their inner emotions. Years of all that secret keeping had pushed them apart until it had been easier to live with Asato than Runa, simply because Michi didn't have to hide herself from him.

Maybe Yusuke had avoided all that heartbreak. Maybe he'd always told Keiko everything.

And maybe he'd told Shuichi, too.

If he had, then how long could she truly expect him to keep her secret safe? More than that, was it even right to require it of him? If he'd avoided the pitfalls Michi hadn't, it seemed a cruel whim to force them on him now.

But focusing on that got her nowhere, and so, as a holler behind her announced Yusuke's arrival with Shuichi and food, she bottled up those fears and shoved them away, somewhere deep and dark and hidden. A problem to be addressed later.

Much later.

* * *

She nearly managed to escape the night without any one-on-one time with Yusuke.

A carefully orchestrated strategy of excuses, bathroom breaks, and dogged evasiveness had kept her always at Shuichi's side or well out of Yusuke's path as dinner turned into window—and occasionally real—shopping. Her avoidance of the ex-Detective was childish and more than likely absurd, and by the time full-blown night had arrived, she started to think it hadn't even been unnecessary.

Not once had Yusuke so much as hinted at their inopportune encounter at Taki's, and though he pestered her with jibes and jokes and exaggerated eyebrow waggles throughout the day, he kept his digs purely focused on what he'd learned about her the evening they'd first met—her love for academics providing his primary source of material. It was behavior that only served to fuel the guilty voice in the back of her mind insisting she hadn't given his tact enough his credit.

But as twilight drew on and Keiko mentioned calling it a night, Yusuke shut that voice up so thoroughly Michi resented it for having existed at all.

"I'm going to run to the bathroom," Keiko said as they readied to leave the cozy bookstore where they'd whiled away the last half hour. From the moment they'd stepped through the door, Yusuke had whined and complained and made a general fool of himself, his prattling drowning out the tinkling bell that welcomed them in, and he was no less quiet now as Keiko shoved her bag of books into his hands and turned heel, long hair swinging.

It was only as she disappeared between the shelves that Michi realized Shuichi wasn't at her side. He was still in the back of the store, ringing out the trio of books he'd pulled from the shelves, blissfully unaware of the doom he'd left her to.

Which, to her dismay, meant she'd quite suddenly been dumped with nothing but Yusuke for company, and not one single means of fending him off.

The grin he shot her was nothing short of fiendish.

He'd leaned his shoulder against an exposed support pillar, his arms crossed over his chest, Keiko's bag of books dangling from one hand. Surrounded by bookcases and magazine racks, the swoop of his gelled hair and brazen jut of his jaw couldn't have been more punkish and cocky.

Right now, he had all the power.

And goodness, did he know it.

His grin slipped away, replaced with a sobriety that smacked of false intention, and with all the nonchalance that usually accompanied the most banal of chitchat, he looked her straight in the eye and said, "So how goes the demon wrangling?"

For half a heartbeat, the world seemed to upend itself, the sensation as disorienting as if some twisted god had grabbed her about the waist, flipped her upside-down, and stuck her feet to the ceiling, leaving her to dangle, defenseless and utterly vulnerable. This had to be what Yurie meant whenever she ranted about out-of-body experiences. This feeling that Michi had been yanked out of reality and now hung suspended, witnessing her own life as nothing but a powerless onlooker, watching as her body staggered like it had been struck, eyes widened in fear, color draining from its cheeks.

Then, as quick as it manifested, the disorientation melded away. She slammed back into herself, reeling and terrified but equipped with at least some semblance of control.

"Don't." It came out quiet as a whisper, but laced with so much stunned disbelief it would be more aptly classified as a hiss. A warning.

A threat.

Yusuke wasn't impressed.

His grin split wide once more, devilish, thoroughly delighted in the reaction he'd evoked. Teal glee and powder blue arrogance pealed through his Loom, neon and electric, igniting an immediate headache to rival the tearing pain in her chest, a terror so overwhelming she could hardly breathe.

"You swore you wouldn't—"

"Tell Shuichi?" Yusuke interrupted. He shoved away from the pole and drew closer, and though they were practically the same height, it felt as though he towered over her, mighty and unstoppable. "I'm a man of my word. I haven't told _Shuichi_ anything."

The way he said it, the emphasis on Shuichi's name, the gleam in his eyes, the electric intensity of his Loom—all of it combined to put ice straight into her heart. Not just in her veins or her belly. No, this was a direct shot to her chest, right into the nerves that kept her heartbeat even and steady, and it did painful, horrible things to her pulse.

Unbidden, tears pricked in her eyes, but she shoved them away and grabbed hold of his wrist, yanking him close. Keiko's bag of books hung between them, the plastic crinkling against her chest.

"Enough. Please."

"I'm just asking. It wasn't a hard question."

He was all innocence, all big wide eyes and simpering smile. Toying with her. Winding her up. This was a game for him.

Never mind that it was her whole life.

Never mind that Shuichi and his Loom were too precious to her to be lost like this.

"If this is your way of forcing me to tell Shuichi about my—" She couldn't bring herself to say it aloud. _Territory_. The word bottled up in her throat, lodged on her tongue as if, despite the dozens of shelves and milling patrons separating Shuichi from this conversation, he'd still hear it the moment she uttered anything even remotely related to the arcane. Abandoning the attempt, she choked down a breath and plowed ahead, letting Yusuke fill in the blanks. "Knock it off. I'll tell him. I _will_." Truth? Lie? She had no idea. "But not now. And I don't want him to learn like this."

The blues in Yusuke's Loom faded, mint suspicion twisting into the threads they'd once occupied, but before he could aim another jab straight into her heart, his eyes flitted behind her, catching on something—or someone—beyond her shoulder. Instantly, the grin wiped from his lips, and he straightened, pulling his wrist from her grip.

She surmised without turning that Shuichi must be winding his way through the shelves, and sure enough, a peek back revealed a shock of scarlet visible over the closest stack of books, roving ever closer, cloaked in the pearlescent strings of the Ties That Bind. With the raging beat of her heart still rushing in her ears, she smoothed a hand over her dress and tugged her jacket straight, then schooled herself back to calm as Yusuke retreated to the exposed support beam and propped his back against it.

They were settled before Shuichi rounded the last corner, but as his viridian gaze found her, she could've sworn there was something in his eyes that said he knew all was not as it seemed. Or maybe it wasn't his eyes. Maybe it was the line of his mouth, its complete lack of curve.

Either way, whatever it was disappeared too quickly for her to decipher its meaning, and as Keiko returned and they stepped into the night, nothing in his pale Loom hinted at any newfound knowledge he'd acquired.

Which made sense. Reasonably, there was no way he could've overheard them. Not all the way at the cash registers. For all his bravado, Yusuke had kept his voice quiet—a small solace in all this. Logic suggested her territory remained safely secret.

But that didn't stop her heart from outspeeding the subway on the way home.

* * *

Knocking on Asato's door had roughly a one-in-four chance of actually being acknowledged. On a good day.

Michi liked to think this problem hadn't existed when she'd been his roommate. And certainly, if it had, it had only worsened since her departure, thanks largely to Yana's propensity for heavy drumlines and his tendency to ratchet the volume of his speakers up to ungodly heights.

All of which meant she shouldn't have been surprised when her knocks went unanswered. Heaven forbid Asato paid even a degree of attention to the door after _asking_ her to come over. Clearly that was far too great an imposition.

How utterly absurd of her to hope otherwise.

Blowing out a sigh, she dug into her bag, groping for her phone, and her fingers had just closed on its rounded edges when the knob turned and the door eased open just enough for her to catch sight of dark eyes, black curls, and a dusting of freckles through the crack.

For a moment, she almost wished the door had stayed closed.

Then she plastered a smile in place and let her phone drop back into her bag's depths. "Hey, Kaito. Didn't realize you'd be here, too."

The opening widened, Kaito stepping back to let her pass within. In that surly, dry way of his, he drawled, "It appears Kido has acquired the impression we're his underlings, available for summoning upon his merest whim."

"You mean you didn't read the fine-print on his minion contract? I'm sure it's stipulated there." Feigning horror as she unzipped her boots, she added, "Or did he fail to give you the agreement?"

Asato's voice boomed around the corner, echoing from the kitchen, raised to ridiculous heights in order to combat the music reliably issuing from Yana's room down the hall. "That's an error that falls at your feet, dearest Weaver. Contract distribution is chief among your duties."

Michi offered up a helpless shrug, as if she were too clueless to manage such a weighty task, but Kaito merely blinked at her, gaze bored behind rimless glasses. It took everything in her not to roll her eyes as she endeavored to ignore the mustard and goldenrod snarled up in his threads. Their failed date was years in the past, back when she'd still been wrapping up her last semester of high school. If he couldn't let the awkwardness go after so long, she might as well write him off as a lost cause.

Which she more or less had.

But goodness, it would've been nice if he could just get over it. Gatherings like this one would be a lot less stilted if he could manage even a moment of humor.

Giving up on him, she trod into the living room, and as she appraised the disheveled couch, trying to decide if risking whatever lurked between its cushions was a better choice than fighting Asato for his reclining armchair, the raging music down the hall hit a crescendo, no doubt indicating Yana opening his door and absorbing the situation. Then it cut out entirely. A moment later, Yana emerged, head ducked to avoid his hair colliding with the doorframe.

"Hey, Michi. It's been awhile."

"Too long, I'd say," she answered. Mind made up, she flopped into the armchair and unleashed its footrest. Asato's wrath was more than worth avoiding the disheveled couch. Contact with that stained upholstery could only be remedied with a severe bout of fire, and she'd never bring herself to roast the sweater dress she'd slipped on.

As the footrest swung up and she stretched out her legs, Yana threw himself onto the couch, sprawling across more than half its length. Clearly, he didn't share her concerns about the mystery blemishes discoloring the cloth. "You dropped out of existence for a little while there."

Her smile turned sheepish. Escaping her duties at the halfway house shouldn't have involved abandoning her friends, but when the semester had started up, she'd been desperate for a reprieve. From everything. Even Yana, lovable lug that he was.

"My course load—"

"Is your favorite excuse," Asato interrupted. He'd strode in from the kitchen, a stack of files in hand, and he tossed the lot onto the coffee table before claiming the cushion Yana had left free. "Don't think stealing my seat will go unpunished, Weaver."

Still poised in the entryway, stiff and unimpressed, Kaito said drily, "If you had an adequate seating arrangement, your _lazyboy_ —" he drawled the term with a healthy dose of contempt "—wouldn't prove nearly so precious."

"Weaver stole the good couch when she moved out. What do you want from me?"

"I hardly stole it. You can't steal what belongs to you."

Asato readied to argue, teal saturating his Loom as his lips twitched with contained laughter, but Kaito spoke before he could. "Why are we here, Kido?" He drew out the chair tucked into the messy desk in the corner and rolled it closer to the coffee table, then flicked a discarded shirt from its back with an apathetic finger. "Surely you have a reason for interrupting our Saturdays. Or is my assumption that you had actual purpose in calling us together a faulty one?"

"Of course I have a reason." He gestured toward the stack of files he'd carried in with him, palm open, entreating them to investigate.

But Michi didn't need to heft one of those folders to know what lay inside. She'd handled plenty of them over the last three years. Those were transfer documents, and judging by the thickness of each, they applied to transplants who'd already moved into Human World. There was too much paper tucked within to cover only Hiei's brusque reports. It had to include follow-up documentation, the accounts Michi and Yana and others drafted any time they checked on the apparitions they'd helped relocate.

It appeared Kaito made the same quick deduction. "We all know what those are, but they hardly provide enlightenment on the reasoning for this little get-together."

Asato spread his arms along the back of the couch. "Fill them in, Yana."

Startled, Yana lurched upright. "Uh, right. Well, Genkai saddled Kido and me with some extra check-in rounds, covering for her and Michi mostly." The smile he tossed Michi's way was disarming, entirely unbothered by the added work that had fallen on him as a direct result of her withdrawal. Despite the warmth reiterated in his lavender threads, she couldn't help a wince and muttered apology. Waving her off, he continued, "For the most part, it seemed pretty status quo. You know, a demon struggling with their Human World job or one who'd made a more-than-friendly connection with a human. Nothing big."

"Yet here we sit."

Yana nodded, but despite Kaito's clear impatience, he made no effort to speed up. On issues of quickness, Yana was always reliable. Plodding. Steadfast. Never, _ever_ in a rush. "See, two of my charges weren't responding. I called. Tried to set up visit times. Dai still hasn't answered. The other picked up my third call and absolutely tore into me." His shoulders heaved upwards, pitching toward his ears in an uneasy shrug. "Never seen Junko so pissed."

Like Taki.

As if he'd read her mind, Asato swung his head toward Michi. "Anger like that sound familiar to you?"

It wasn't a question. Not truly.

And from there, it wasn't hard to work out why Asato had called them all here. She spotted the same gears turning in Kaito's eyes, his threads shifting from garnet irritation and emerald curiosity to mustard anxiety and moss apprehension—and though his Loom lost its jewel-tone brightness, his new threads proved even harder to look at.

They aligned so strongly with the emotions jangling in her own chest. Too strongly. Together with Asato and Yana's Looms, Kaito became too much. It _all_ became too much.

Only an effort of will was enough to cajole her vocal chords into action. "So what are you saying exactly? That whatever's happening to Taki is affecting more demons?" She bunched the hem of her dress into tight twists. "Did Genkai order this meeting?"

Asato laced his hands behind his head. "I'm going to answer that in parts, Weaver. Bear with me. First off, no, Genkai isn't part of this. Not yet, anyway." He shared a conspiratorial glance with Yana. "Strictly speaking, we haven't actually told her."

Kaito didn't interrupt, but there was no missing the huff he exhaled. Sardonic and unsurprised in equal measure.

Undeterred, Asato plowed ahead. "I let her know we were proceeding with rounds as normal, and she didn't ask questions, so I didn't bring this part up. It's not like we know anything yet. Even if I had told her, she'd have just chewed my head off for not having answers."

A convenient defense, but probably also an accurate one.

Genkai had little patience for mysteries.

"Nevertheless, we obviously can't let these transplants go unaccounted for, and that's where this—" he whirled a finger in a circle, indicating their gathering "—comes in. I'm thinking Yana and I shouldn't check on Junko and Dai alone."

Kaito pushed his glasses further up his nose with purposeful intent, then surveyed the three of them, gaze sweeping over Asato and Yana before hesitating on Michi. "You want us to accompany you."

"You bet," Yana said.

"Why?" Kaito crossed his arms, lenses flashing as he cocked his head. "I get bringing Michi. You clearly suspect these demons have the same abnormalities in their Looms that she's witnessed in Taki's." At the widening of her eyes, he tacked on, "You didn't think that stayed a secret, did you? Genkai told Yana and me weeks ago. And obviously it's not simply a malfunction of your territory. Even if you were capable of impacting Looms, these white threads appear a symptom, not a cause, of whatever is happening." She flinched at his bald-faced proclamation, flustered despite its brutal accuracy, but Kaito's focus cut back to Asato before she could muster any response. "However, it's unclear what purpose I serve."

Yana stifled a yawn. "You're the brain of the crew, Kaito. I mean, did you just hear yourself? We need you to solve the puzzle."

If a puzzle existed.

And if the buzzing excitement slashing through Asato's Loom in streaks of moss and teal wasn't enough to go by, the undercurrent of navy determination that wove over his core sealed it—he was convinced that there was more at work here.

It was hard to say he was wrong. Between the psychics whose territories had acted up, and now these recurring oddities amongst the halfway house transplants, all did not seem normal.

The piece she was missing, however, was why that was anything to be excited about.

She didn't have to grope far for an answer. "You want there to be something to find, don't you, Shade?" She shook her head, frustration welling within her. "The Spirit Detectives getting a new case has made you so darn eager for one of your own that it doesn't even matter to you that Taki is in pain. That whatever's wrong is literally tearing him apart."

Asato bristled. "Oh, come off your high horse, Weaver. You know that's a load of crap. Of course I care about Taki. Of course I want to help him. Just because I'm itching to investigate this doesn't mean my reasons are… immoral."

Nothing more than a brief glance at Yana was necessary to confirm he shared Asato's sentiments, and—to her immense surprise and disappointment—even Kaito had perked up, chin rising, dark eyes narrowed in calculation.

They all wanted this. Every last one of them.

But she wasn't out of protests yet. "And why do you think this should run through us? If there's something truly wrong, we should leave it to Spirit World to sort out. Quickly, before it gets out of control."

"Well, that's the thing, Weaver. If there was time sensitivity at work here, I'd agree in a heartbeat. But there isn't. Taki has been basically stable. Not better, but by no means in an emergency situation either." Asato leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. "If we hand this off to someone else, we can't guarantee how our transplants will be treated. We can't be sure Spirit World officials won't just whisk them back to Demon World and consider the matter resolved. But us? We're equipped to handle this. We know Junko and Dai. They trust us. And we owe it to them to root out the cause of all this."

In the face of his steadfast navy, she could mount little defense—especially once Yana started nodding and Kaito issued an agreeable cluck of his tongue.

So that was that.

They were officially on the case.

And she hated it.

* * *

AN: Well, this chapter ran long. Yusuke's shenanigans were too fun to put a stop to, and it was nice to finally introduce Keiko—not to mention Kaito and Yana. So many characters I adore. Momentum is building now! And the next chapter is one I think you'll all enjoy. Can't wait to share it next week!

All the thanks to everyone who reviewed! I was genuinely surprised last chapter got so much love, especially since it was so focused on a trio of original characters. Y'all made my week: knightsqueen05, ballet022, Antiqua-hime17, o-dragon, ahyeon, WistfulSin, Emzybubble, A, Guest, ClaireShepardHKKY, and Deanna Price.


	12. Plum Luck

"You should come up."

The night was quiet, evening gathering like a gauzy cloak over Mushiyori, painting long, lazy shadows across the sidewalk. Overhead, the moon hung heavy, its pale disk gilding Shuichi in silver, turning his eyes as deep and unknowable as the ocean.

Under the starlight, poised atop the steps to her apartment building, her fingers entwined in his, Michi's whole world was buzzing, her blood fizzing with the whirl of this night. He'd taken her to the movies, to a tiny, old-fashioned theater tucked off the subway near campus, another secret gem she'd never uncovered in all her years in Mushiyori, as precious and wonderful as the botanical gardens they'd returned to twice since that dreamlike night when he'd first kissed her.

When he'd originally suggested catching a matinee, she'd balked. Theaters, like the subway during a thunderstorm, had long been reduced to a rubble-strewn warzone—a testing of her territory and wherewithal that she had refused to face for nearly five years. A proper film, one actually worth seeing, evoked such deep, uniform emotion from the audience that their Looms all synced into one twisted tapestry, and all that concentrated color was bound to ruin any movie, regardless of its storytelling or camerawork or directing.

But it was hard to say no to Shuichi. Hard to hear his voice humming through her phone, so close it sent shivers down her spine, and disappoint him.

So she'd acquiesced. She'd thrown out a prayer that the theater would be small, the audience sparse, the film emotionally muted—whatever it took to keep the Loom of Life bearable.

As it turned out, none of those entreaties were needed. What she'd forgotten to account for was _Shuichi_. His Loom. Its soft, subdued shades. The way it wrapped her beneath its filaments and soothed her territory, cocooning her like some squalling infant blanketed in a perfect swaddle. Giving her peace. Granting her space to breathe and think and _feel_ of her own accord.

The movie had been a joy. A gift.

A piece of the Michi of old come back to life. Because she had _loved_ movie theaters, and oh, how she'd missed them.

With him—with mesmerizing, astonishing Shuichi—she had them back.

The thrill of that truth still clamored in her heart, prompting her to tug lightly on his fingers. A smile played at the corner of his lips as he climbed a step further up the stoop. It lit fires in her bones, sending licking flames and spiraling sparks to join the fizzing in her veins. "It's getting late, Michi." His grin turned wry. "Yusuke and Kuwabara will worry."

"What are they? Your keepers?" Her hand fumbled at her back, seeking the keyhole. She couldn't look away from him. Not even for a second. He was too magnetic. Too alluring. And, truth be told, she didn't want to.

What she wanted— _all_ she wanted—was to memorize every second of this night. That secretive twist of his lips. The crinkling at his eyes, warm and affectionate and spellbinding. The fit of his leather jacket, its creases around his deceptively broad shoulders. The way his white undershirt flitted into view when she lifted his hand, the hem of his button-down shirt rising.

"Come up," she said again, soft as the breeze drafting down the empty street. "My mother always sends me hot chocolate to welcome in December. A silly tradition. But she spends way too much money, and it's delicious." She tugged his hand again as her key found the lock and she twisted it home. He rose the final step, drawing even with her on the stoop, and she whispered, "It's yummier shared."

"An irresistible temptation." His tongue darted out, wetting his lips, and somehow, she thought he might not be talking about hot cocoa. She could hardly stand to breathe as his free hand closed over hers on the doorknob. It turned beneath their conjoined palms. "After you, then."

They climbed the twisting stairs to her floor in unison, hands still linked, his thumb tracing across her knuckles. Last night, Runa had visited, and they'd stayed up for hours, pouring over notes for their fast approaching Cognitive Psychology exam—their last test of the semester. When at last Runa had departed, Michi had been so exhausted she'd crawled into bed without uncovering her psychic wards, and so she led Shuichi over the threshold without fear. Unlike his last visit, there'd be no uncovered parchment to stumble upon now.

It was only as she ducked to unzip her boots that she released her hold on him, yet his grip lingered a heartbeat longer, and when she glanced up and caught his eye, the play of purple threads across his cheeks yanked the air from her lungs.

Over time, she'd come to expect the moments when Shuichi's Loom shone true. They'd become, if not predictable, at least understandable, occurring only when he felt something of genuine, infinite depth. Flashes of cobalt amusement after she landed a perfect joke. Rich lavender affection whenever his mother called during one of their nights together. Rare instances, but reliable nonetheless.

What she saw now… The purple of emperors and royalty. Deep plum. Ripe beet. Red wine. A dozen names for a purple that dark, that distinct.

In others, it meant attraction. Lust. Desire.

In him, as his gaze tracked over her, sweeping from head to foot, it meant things that turned her knees weak and wobbly as a newborn foal's.

And unlike his Loom's usual moments of clarity, this one lingered, remaining with him as he toed off his shoes and slipped out of his jacket, hanging amongst his threads as he padded down the hall and she trailed in his wake, still dark purple and unmissable as she led him to the couch. Logically, she should've headed for the kitchen instead. She'd promised him hot chocolate, after all. But her head was swirling, her heart pumping blood at a pace that made the world spin, and for a second, it was all she could do to keep her feet.

He must've read something in her eyes or maybe in the heat risen in her cheeks or the sudden shortness of her breath, because he laughed softly as he picked up the television remote. "Perhaps I should prepare the hot cocoa?" Half-question, half-joke, all-tease.

"No. I've got it." She shook her head, as if that might be enough to clear her vision, but still the plum remained, playing across his features in swathes as dark as the skyline at dusk. "Give me a minute."

He chuckled. It turned her to putty. "Take your time."

It wasn't time she needed so much as composure. A chance to slow her pulse. To gather her breath. To remind her fluttering heart that his Loom was tricky, that reading it wasn't like deciphering others.

Perhaps plum didn't mean the same for him.

Or… perhaps it did.

In the kitchen, she puttered from cabinet to cabinet, her trembling hands searching in vain for the fancy, far-too-expensive hot cocoa her mother had sent, only to discover the tin of chocolate powder on the counter, tucked beside her water boiler, right where she and Runa had left it the night before. It seemed unfair how thoroughly Shuichi had undone her, how wholly he'd scattered her wits.

One look and she'd been bested.

But prepping the hot cocoa provided much needed distraction, and as the water came to a boil, her pulse steadied enough that she could pour it without incident. As she worked, she heard the television come to life, the staccato tone of a news broadcast drifting into the kitchen. Not exactly a mood-invoking viewing choice, but maybe exactly what she needed.

When she returned to him, two steaming mugs topped with rapidly melting whipped cream in hand, she discovered Shuichi on the couch, leaning forward, elbows braced atop his knees. Any trace of purple was long gone from his threads. In its stead, she found yellow—the kind that tied her stomach into an entirely different sort of knot from that she'd experienced minutes before.

Yellow like pollen dried across a windshield. The ugly, uneasy rot of discomfort.

"Shuichi?"

He held a finger to his lips, tipping his head toward the screen. Swallowing roughly, she sank down at his side and eased both their mugs onto her ottoman.

It took only a moment's glance at the television to piece together what had unnerved him. The broadcast was rolling grainy feed of a dark street, of ambulances and police cars, of flashing lights and wailing sirens. Over it all, a news anchor spoke in somber tones, telling of an as-yet-unexplained attack, seven dead, at least a dozen injured, officers in pursuit of a suspect.

She barely heard any of it, barely felt Shuichi's hand find her knee, squeezing in what he no doubt meant as a gesture of comfort. A useless, pointless gesture of comfort.

Because that darkened street wasn't just the scene of some horrid crime.

No.

The ruptured pavement. The shattered storefront windows. The shell-shocked police officers interviewing ghost-white pedestrians.

None of that was of this world. She knew it instantly and without hesitation. The devastation unfolding on screen had not been caused by a mere human, but by a psychic. One who'd lost control. One whose territory must have escaped them.

Asato was wrong. The Spirit Detectives were wrong.

The psychic outbreak wasn't over.

"That's only a few blocks from here," she whispered. "If we'd walked, rather than taken the subway…" She couldn't finish the thought. The words couldn't be forced past her lips.

But he understood them anyway.

If they'd walked, they might have been caught up in the attack. They could have been one of the injured whisked away in those blaring ambulances. One of the dead tucked inside body bags.

"Michi." His hand squeezed her knee again. Drew her focus to him. "It doesn't do to dwell on what-ifs and possibilities." He sounded calm. Together. Far less rattled than she felt as the world spun away from her, dropping from beneath her feet and carrying her with it at a pace that left her innards hundreds of feet overhead, a sickening amusement park ride gone off the tracks.

For a splintered second, she thought of calling Asato. As if he'd already have answers. As if he could somehow go back and stop this.

But then she batted that idea away. It was foolish. Stupid. And now wasn't the time to call her cousin, not with Shuichi at her side, his fingertips burning through her tights, his concern showing like pale coral in his threads.

In its place rose a fresh thought. One that wrested control of her and wouldn't let go until she uttered it aloud.

Breathless, she said, "Stay."

His brow creased.

Before he could voice any sort of protest, she said it again. "Stay. Please. It's… It happened so close to here, and the attacker hasn't been caught. If he strikes again—" If the psychic had another outburst and Shuichi was caught in it, she'd never forgive herself for letting him leave. Not in a million years. "I know it's not rationale. I know you'd probably get home fine. But please… Please stay."

He released her knee, his thumb catching on the curls fallen into her face and tucking them behind her ear. She expected resistance. Excuses about impropriety or timing or even that he simply didn't have what he needed to spend the night.

None of that came.

Instead, his lips found her temple, a quick, fleeting kiss right at her hairline. Then his arms encircled her, and she sagged against the hard planes of his chest, her face pressed into the collar of his shirt. "Whatever you want, Michi."

She caught a sob against her teeth, refusing to let it free, and a dozen thudding beats of her heart passed before she could muster an answer, the silence broken only by the steady voice of the broadcaster, the account of the attack repeating on loop. Until finally she trusted herself enough to lift her head and whisper, "Thank you."

Only then, peering up at him through the fall of her bangs, did she recognize the tightness in his jaw, the agitation darkening his eyes. And she realized, as if through the haze of a dream, that maybe he wasn't staying because she'd asked. Maybe he wasn't staying because his journey home might be riddled with danger.

Maybe he was staying because those deaths had happened only blocks away. Because apartments at the front of her building might very well be able to see the scene from their windows. Because he didn't fear for his own safety, but for _hers_.

* * *

At some point, Shuichi changed the channel. Found something light-hearted. A game show granting them a soundtrack of laughter and cheer rather than sirens and gravity.

And at some point after that, they started talking. About the movie they'd watched. About the tiny, back alley soba restaurant they'd discovered and the delicious dishes they'd ordered. About Michi's approaching finals and their respective holiday plans. Until it was late and yawns snuck between Michi's words. Until the game show gave way to a sappy drama. Until Shuichi nudged her gently and stirred her from a sleep that had crept out of nowhere. "Perhaps we should turn in before the night gets away from us entirely."

Stifling a fresh yawn against the back of her hand, Michi rose. A stiffness had taken up residence in her neck, and it made its presence known now that she was no longer tucked against Shuichi's side. She rubbed at the knot absently, frowning at their long-forgotten mugs of hot chocolate, the whipped cream melted and congealed.

Steely blue glinted in Shuichi's threads as he stood and stretched, an amused light in his eyes. Then he scooped up the cups and gestured her forward.

She dragged fingers through her hair, too tired to care what it might do to the curls she'd painstakingly styled. "I think I have a change of clothes I can offer you. For sleeping, I mean."

"Oh?" He set the mugs in the sink, then hesitated a moment, watching her—waiting for a signal.

Pulse skittering in her veins, she gestured him down the hall.

Her bedroom was neater than the last time he'd been here, the bed made, her pajamas tucked beneath her pillow—though suddenly the old t-shirt and patched-up sweats she'd been wearing to sleep recently seemed not nearly as welcoming as they usually did. Rolling her eyes at her own absurdity, she ducked into her closet and rooted around on a shelf above her dresses until her hand closed on a shirt and pair of men's athletic shorts.

Asato's clothing. Left over from the day he'd helped her move in. He'd stayed the night, sprawling across her couch. A silly, yet much appreciated aide in her transition to living alone. In the morning, as he'd stumbled out, off to a day of halfway house duties, he'd forgotten the lot on her bathroom floor. For months she'd meant to return them. Good thing she'd kept forgetting.

"Here we go," she announced, emerging with the outfit in hand.

Shuichi remained only a step inside the door, surveying her with an intensity that awoke every last nerve ending she possessed. Plum had returned to his Loom. Not quite so bold or all-encompassing, but present in lithe bolts of color.

She crossed to him on unsteady feet and pressed Asato's clothes into his hands.

A flicker of lime and dash of emerald overrode the plum. Surprise. Curiosity. He raised a quizzical brow as he shook out the shirt and confirmed it was cut for a man's broad shoulders.

"Oh," she breathed, sudden embarrassment burning like wildfire in her cheeks. "Those aren't… I should explain. They're—"

"You don't owe me clarification, Michi." His laugh rang low, thrumming through the scant space between them.

She shivered. Possessing a laugh like that wasn't _fair_. And besides, he was wrong. He needed to know those weren't some stranger's. That she didn't keep a wardrobe of past conquests' pajamas stacked in her closet. She cleared her throat raggedly before trying again. "Those are my cousin's. Not some guy's—"

His thumb brushed her wrist, light as a feather's kiss. A simple touch, yet it silenced her instantly. "I know." And then, naturally, like it was the most obvious truth in the world, he added, "I trust you, Michi."

The world tipped sideways.

Trust. In her.

Impossible.

He was off without waiting for an answer, leaving her to her utter bewilderment as he trod down the hall to the bathroom. In the doorway, he paused and glanced back. Even at this distance, the brilliance of his eyes seemed ethereal. Unbelievably so. "Get changed," he murmured, gaze flicking along her tights and up her dress. From the twist of his lips, she gathered he'd calculated what such a look might do to her—but he was wrong. Circumstances weren't what he thought they were. "Open the door when you're done?"

She managed a stilted nod, then tacked on: "There should be spare toothbrushes under the sink. They're all yours."

"I imagine I'll only need one." His chuckle echoed down the hall as the door clicked shut.

Heart hammering, she shut her own door and, despite the shake building in her muscles, made quick work of pulling on her pajamas. She was too numb to give heed to the faint fizz of uncertainty in her gut that worried how Shuichi might perceive her ratty t-shirt. It hardly mattered. Not in the face of the bomb he'd just dropped.

He hadn't intended the shock of it. If anything, he'd anticipated his words invoking the opposite reaction of what they had. _I trust you, Michi_. Undoubtedly, he'd designed it as a reassurance. His means of easing her uncalled for apprehension over the origin of Asato's outfit.

But in that respect, he'd failed.

Because trusting her? With the degree of gentle, affectionate conviction that had lived in those words? A mistake.

For weeks, she'd hidden the most important part of herself. She'd deceived him at every turn. In every moment that she used his threads to further understand him, she was playing with him. Manipulating him. Betraying him.

And he _trusted_ her.

It was only then, as he'd offered that revelation, that she realized the depth of her dishonesty. It was only then that she saw how completely she'd wronged him.

Just like Genkai had said weeks prior.

A knock on the doorframe startled her. "Michi? All set in there?"

How long had she stood rooted in place? How long had he been out there, patiently waiting?

She lurched for the knob and yanked the door open, revealing Shuichi on the other side, crimson hair clashing against Asato's purple top. In another time, on another night, if he hadn't just shaken her to her core, she might've been left speechless. The defined cut of his shoulders. The illusive curve of his biceps, peaking out beneath the t-shirt's short sleeves. Sometimes, she forgot how staggeringly handsome he was, and then, in moments like this one, the world reminded her in stunning detail.

But there was no room for awe as he stepped closer. His hand rose to her cheek. She almost bucked out of reach, but held firm, willing herself to stay steady. "Will you manage to sleep?" he asked.

Unlikely.

Never mind the rogue psychic loose in the streets. Never mind that she'd be sharing her bed with him. Never mind that she hadn't given any thought to what he might expect in the coming minutes.

Never mind any of that, because she was still reeling, still tumbling endlessly into the abyss he'd opened.

 _I trust you, Michi._

"I hope so," she said after a beat.

Coral concern bloomed in his threads, a bit muted, but distinct nevertheless. His gaze swept toward her bed. Pushed into the corner as it was, it wasn't set up for two. A quirked brow illustrated he'd reached the same conclusion.

"I'll take the inside," she said. "Just let me brush my teeth." And take off her makeup. And try to remember how to breathe.

"Certainly." His thumb traced her cheekbone a brush longer, then he stepped aside and allowed her into the hall.

Her time in the bathroom passed in a blur of minty toothpaste and fresh-scented makeup remover, and by the time she returned to her room, she was no calmer than when she'd left. Shuichi sat at the head of the bed, legs extended, crossed at the ankle, his phone in hand.

"May I?" she asked, fingers on the light switch.

He nodded, and she flicked the room into darkness. Gloom settled instantly, though his cell lit him from below, its white light washing out his startling features. She clambered past his feet with as much grace as she could muster, then slipped beneath the covers.

After a beat, he set his phone aside, and without its screen, the dark closed in full. Or, she imagined, it did for him. She could still see his threads. Pollen yellow had twined through the coral, but as he joined her under the comforter, turning onto his side to face her, the amethyst that was his version of affection glimmered, too.

She knew without asking why he'd checked his phone. "Have they caught the attacker yet?"

"Appears not."

Good.

Good for those police officers on patrol that they hadn't run afoul of a combatant they couldn't possibly wrangle. She could only hope that Spirit World would intervene before morning. Maybe at that very moment the Spirit Detectives were combing the city, tracking the assailant down.

But as soon as those thoughts crossed her mind, she regretted them. And not just that. She hated them, too. Because they were more secrets, more deceptions. More reasons Shuichi shouldn't have said what he had.

 _I trust you, Michi._

She ached with the pain of it, and she thought again of Genkai, of the harsh barrage of realities the psychic had hit her with when Michi had last visited the mountain compound. It was enough to bring tears pricking to her eyes.

"Thank you for staying tonight," she whispered when the quiet became too much for her.

His hand snaked through the dark, finding her with perfect aim. A finger wove through her hair, slipping curls behind her ear before gliding down the curve of her jaw. "No thanks necessary." A short pause proceeded the supposition she'd drawn earlier. "Truth be told, I didn't want to leave you here alone. Not so close to the attack."

The proximity of his threads and rustle of the sheets announced his movement. Then his lips found hers. A brief kiss, and nothing more. There was no expectation. None of the burning heat promised in the plum threads she'd glimpsed earlier.

Not on this night.

He eased back to his previous position. His threads retreated. "Sleep tight, Michi."

"You, too."

In the ensuing quiet, she jammed her eyes shut, but the glow of his threads burned on the back of her eyelids, an inescapable afterimage. All that amethyst. All that coral.

Goodness, she was a fool.

What had she been thinking all these weeks? How had she thought this would end up?

Why hadn't she foreseen a night like this one?

Because there was no denying it now. She was falling for Shuichi. Hard and fast and without any means to catch herself. No parachute clung to her shoulders, ripcord waiting to be pulled. No harness hung at her waist, bungee cord stretching back to safety. There was just this fall. Endless and breathtaking. A fall she'd started to think would never be hers.

Until she'd met him.

Until Shuichi.

But she'd grasped at her secrets, at her half-truths and duplicities. She'd been the girl she wished she could be, not the girl she really was. And now… Somehow, she had to fix that.

She had to show him _her_. The real Michi. The only one that existed anymore. The one who'd woken up five years ago to a world awash in color and had been floundering ever since. The one who only felt like she could keep her head above water when she was with him, floating in the colorless wonder of the sanctuary he provided.

She owed him the truth. He _had_ to know. All of it.

And if he hated her for it, she could only blame herself. Because she'd made this jump. She'd chosen this fall. If he didn't want to take it with her—for any reason—it was her fault for leaping too soon.

His hand traced lower, fingers skimming down her neck, drifting across her collarbone, gliding along her arm, and lacing through her own. Then he went still. His breathing evened out.

Her heart pounded in her ears. "Shuichi?"

"Hmm?"

It was the most inarticulate she'd ever heard him, and it was all the proof she needed that now wasn't the time for the truth. Now, she should sleep. Come morning, she'd brew fresh hot cocoa, prepare breakfast, and turn his world upside-down over whipped cream and fresh-cut fruit. Despite all odds, she'd find the words needed to make him see.

For better or worse.

As good a plan as any. Except for the sleeping.

She doubted she'd manage any of that.

* * *

AN: A storm's coming, y'all. We're but a handful of chapters out from this whole story turning on its head, and I can't wait. There are a lot of threads to this story (pardon the pun) and I've been keeping them all up in the air, not letting them tangle, but it's officially time to weave those bad boys together, and once I do, there's no going back!

With this chapter, we've finally reached the second song that forms the soundtrack of this fic: 'Bright' by Echosmith. True story, when I dreamed up this chapter, I was walking my dog and listening to 'Bright' on repeat, and I actually started tearing up imagining Michi and Kurama lying in bed together. That's not a thing I usually do while writing. But this chapter (and where we're headed from here) made my heart ache for Michi. Fingers crossed I made y'all feel even a piece of that emotion!

Anyway, the specific lines of 'Bright' that most make me think of this fic are: "And I see colors in a different way / You make what doesn't matter fade to grey / Life is good and that's the way it should be."

Boundless thanks to everyone who reviewed last week. This story has officially passed 100 reviews, which isn't some grand number, but sure does feel nice. I'm so happy to have you all along for the ride! Shout out to last chapter's reviewers: TECHNICALpanda, MissLini, knightsqueen05, ahyeon, WistfulSin, Deanna Price, ballet022, o-dragon, Antiqua-hime17, and both Guests!


	13. White Like Ashes

Sleep claimed Michi eventually, the grays of her darkened bedroom giving way to the black of dreamless slumber. But how long that rest lasted, she couldn't be certain. It surely felt as though no time had passed before Shuichi's soft voice roused her. "Michi?"

She cracked open an eye, startled to find him propped up on one arm, his elbow distending the mattress, his phone once again clutched in his long fingers. Her acknowledgment came as a wordless hum.

Though he chuckled lowly, the laughter didn't curve his lips or brighten his eyes. "Sleep well?"

"Depends."

"On?"

She tugged the blanket up to her chin, snuggling more firmly beneath its warmth. "Your standard for quality rest." A yawn snuck up on her, and she yanked the quilt over her gaping mouth before continuing, "Dreamlessly? Yes. Soundly? Not so much."

"I hope my presence didn't disturb you."

She nearly rolled her eyes. It had been the even rhythm of his breathing that at last lulled her to sleep. Without him, she'd probably still be staring at the ceiling, every second dragging past like hours. But admitting that was too mortifying to be considered. Instead, she rolled toward him, curling into his side.

His arm curved around her, his fingers tangling in her hair, and she would've been content to fall back asleep—to cling to these last moments before he _knew_ for as long as he'd allow her to. Too bad it seemed they'd already reached that precipice.

"I'm sorry to do this to you," he said, "but a friend needs me. An unexpected emergency has arisen—"

"And you need to go." She finished the sentence for him, as if doing so might soften the blow of his departure—as if he'd not just upended the countless iterations of this morning she'd planned as she lay awake the night before, plotting out every possible route their conversation could have taken, planning how to untangle every knot and smooth over every hitch.

How foolish not to predict the discussion failing to occur at all.

He kissed her, then. By all rights, it was a kiss that should have left her breathless. Deep. Unhurried. His fingers still playing in her hair. His chest slanting across hers. A kiss with intention. A kiss with meaning.

A kiss she should've reveled in.

But all she could think was that her opportunity had slipped from her grasp. She'd finally worked up the will and courage and nerve needed to teach him about her territory, to reveal how exhaustively she'd trampled his privacy for weeks now, to beg him not to shun her for that breach in his trust, and it was all for naught.

As he pulled back, she rose to follow, the blanket pooling in her lap. He shook his head. The light press of his hand against her shoulder eased her back to the pillow. "Stay in bed. Get some more rest." His smile flickered across his lips, pale cobalt dancing in his threads, twisting through milling amethyst. "I know how you hate mornings. No need for us both to suffer such an early hour."

"You're hardly suffering. You love daybreak."

"Indeed, I do." In three purposeful strides, he'd crossed to his neatly folded clothes, which he'd left by the door, and scooped the pile up.

"There's a hamper in the bathroom. Toss Asato's things in there."

In the half-light filtering through her curtains, she couldn't make out his face, not obscured as it was beneath his ghostly Loom, but she noted the way he hesitated, the slight catch in his voice. "Will do. I'll be in touch once the situation shakes out, all right?"

"Mhmm."

"See you soon, Michi."

"Okay," she whispered to his silhouette, wishing desperately that he would turn around and crawl back beneath the sheets, that she had the words to make him stay—that his friend's emergency wasn't greater than the crisis he didn't even realize she was having. "Be safe. Please."

"Certainly." The door snicked closed at his back, and a few minutes passed in which she could hear him padding through her apartment. The running of the sink. The flushing of the toilet. More footsteps as he crossed to the entryway. The front door creaking open and shut.

Then silence.

She lay still long enough to patch together her frayed edges, then heaved upright and groped across the nightstand until her fingers closed on her phone. A dozen texts waited on the lock screen. From her parents. A group chat from the girls. And five from Asato. Four of which she'd received last night. One this morning.

The first she'd expected. No doubt she'd find its contents echoed in the messages from her parents and friends. _-You safe? Heard there was some sort of terror attack near your district.-_

The second had arrived fifteen minutes later. _-Caught the news. That sort of damage has to be from a psychic. Another one must have lost control. Call me.-_ Then the third, two minutes after that. _-Weaver, if you're there, you need to at least text me. I need to know you're okay. Genkai's been in touch. She's worried about you, too.-_

If not for the fifth text, she would have laughed at the fourth. Terse. Irritated. Classic Asato. _–Fucking call me, Weaver. I'm not kidding. You're going to wish you were on that damn street if I don't hear from you soon.-_

And then the last. Received barely twenty minutes prior. Perhaps right before she'd woken up. For a fleeting moment, she dreaded Shuichi having seen the screen, having witnessed what Asato had written, but then the full weight of his text hit, and what Shuichi might've glimpsed hardly mattered anymore.

 _-Last night wasn't a psychic. It was one of our demons. Dai. Shit, Weaver. It was fucking Dai.-_

Then, even as she fumbled for a response, her fingers unresponsive atop the touch keyboard, another text buzzed in, the message popping up in a gray bubble. - _Me and Kaito and Yana are coming to pick you up. We have to check on Junko. Now. See you in thirty. Be ready for anything.-_

At last her fine motor control unlocked. She keyed out a choppy response before lurching to her feet and stumbling into her closet.

This was worse—so much worse—than she'd thought.

* * *

Thirty minutes proved to be eighteen more than she needed. In under five, she was dressed in jeans and a warm sweater. After another three, her hair was up, her breath minty, and the most basic coat of eyeliner and mascara applied.

With time left to kill, she wandered around her apartment in a near trance, prying down the wall coverings obscuring her psychic wards. While Shuichi had been over, she'd hardly needed their protections, but without him, the filaments of her neighbors' Looms crept back across her awareness. Anxiety cloaked them all in cloying strands, mustard stained across gray exhaustion and mauve sadness. The destruction Dai had wrought was like a poison, ruining not just the streets beyond her building's walls but rattling its very foundations, too.

These people weren't accustomed to acts of violence so close to home.

In truth, neither was Michi.

Yet despite the fear creeping treacherous tendrils around her spine, when her buzzer screeched Asato's arrival, she was only too eager to grab her bag and race down the stairs. She couldn't stand to be alone. Not with the crushing tension riddling her territory. Not with Shuichi's words still echoing in her eyes. _I trust you, Michi_. Not with any of it.

She needed brassy, bravado-fueled Asato. She needed steadfast, lumbering Yana. Goodness, she'd even take awkward, overly analytical Kaito.

Anything other than the quiet.

The boys were waiting in the street, jackets snug around their shoulders, heads ducked against a stiff wind. As soon as she emerged, Asato swept her into a hug. His voice hummed in her ear. "Next time, text me. Seriously, Weaver. You're lucky I didn't come break down your door last night."

"Sorry," she muttered, her voice muffled against his shirt. She snaked her arms around his waist and held tight, letting him anchor her—just for a moment. "I had company." Careful wording. Intended not to ruffle Kaito's always tenuous composure. None of them needed that degree of distraction today.

But Asato understood her hidden meaning, and he laughed as he stepped back. "Gotcha. Well, wouldn't hurt to text your damn family next time a disaster strikes right on your doorstop. You hear me?"

"Loud and clear."

"Good." He shoved his hands in his pockets and surveyed Yana and Kaito. "Then let's do this. The sooner we track down Junko, the sooner I stop feeling like we're all destined for Spirit World jail cells, yeah?"

A joke.

Yana managed a laugh. Kaito did not.

Neither did Michi.

In all likelihood, Yana's rough chortle would have to last them awhile. Today didn't strike her like a day for laughter.

* * *

Junko lived in tenements an hour's drive out from Mushiyori. Usually, they'd have made the journey via bus routes and frigid sidewalks, but with a thousand questions hanging in the air between their foursome like swarming gnats, they opted instead for traversing the distance in Asato's car.

Yana and Kaito yielded the front passenger seat to Michi, though she went a round of stubborn hand gestures and sweeping bows with Yana before accepting. It made no sense to give her the added legroom, but he'd put on an air of chivalry she simply didn't have the bandwidth to combat.

Once they were securely ensconced in the vehicle, Asato set course for the nearest highway on-ramp, and for a brief while, all those gnats buzzed too loudly, too ominously, for anyone to find words. Until, at last, Michi couldn't take it anymore. Toying with a hair elastic, thwacking it against her wrist over and over, she asked, "So what happened? The real story, I mean. Not what they're showing on the news."

Her words lit a powder keg, all the strain knotted between them shifting from goldenrod disquiet to full-blown mustard anxiety and scarlet agitation.

Driving one-handed, knuckles white atop the wheel, Asato spoke first. "The three of us were out last night. Grabbing drinks. Dinner. Planning the best way to check-in on Dai, believe it or not. The restaurant had the news playing on a television set in the corner. No volume. But Yana saw the police lights on screen."

In the back row, knees crammed awkwardly against her seat, Yana shifted. Every squirm of his legs jarred her, but she could hardly begrudge him movement considering the circumstances. "The restaurant owner unmuted, and we pieced together that some kind of attack had happened. It wasn't until we got back to Kaito's place that we saw actual footage of the scene."

"And realized it was, what, two blocks from your apartment?"

Her nose crinkled. "More like five."

Asato tossed her a sidelong glance, decidedly unimpressed with her nitpick. "Point being, that's when I first texted you."

Kaito cleared his throat, and she glanced back in time to see him uncross then recross his legs, as fidgety and uncomfortable as Yana. "I noted the degree of destruction. From there we put together the pieces. This wasn't some freak act of violence." He took off his glasses and rubbed at the red marks marring the bridge of his nose. "We falsely assumed a rogue psychic was responsible."

"I made the same faulty leap of logic," she admitted.

"Figured you would." Asato drummed his fingers against the wheel and dragged his other hand through his bleached locks. "Anyway, I got a call into Genkai not long after that. Apparently, Yusuke had already checked in, too, and he was out looking for the attacker, but he wasn't sensing a psychic territory."

She didn't need him to outline the rest, though he did in a voice so grave it stilled her fiddling hands, her elastic smarting against the tender underside of her wrist a final time.

"He was tracking a demon."

"Dai," she whispered.

"Yup." Yana heaved a groan. "I should've been out there. Looking. Dai was my charge. Should've been me who brought him in."

Despite herself, the fist clenched around Michi's lungs loosened the slightest degree. "So Yusuke caught him then?"

Asato had threaded them into traffic, and as they merged onto the highway, he gave the car gas, racing toward Junko's housing allotment. "Yeah. Around two in the morning. Nabbed him on the city outskirts. Evidently Dai put up quite the fight, but Yusuke subdued him. He passed him off to Spirit World officials this morning."

The fist reasserted itself. Her heartbeat ran ragged. "Spirit World?"

"Dai ended human lives," Kaito stated tonelessly, like he'd uttered nothing more than cold, simple fact. And as he continued, each word dropping with precise care, she realized he had to say it that way, because if he didn't, they'd all fall apart. "It's the one sin Spirit World stoutly refuses to overlook. I can't say I disagree with such judgment."

Yana's knees bucked against her seat. "Bullshit. You know Dai. Or maybe you don't. But I do. He wouldn't have hurt humans given a choice. Something must be wrong with him."

Like Taki.

Like the white in his Loom. In his core.

But no one in Spirit World would be able to verify if Dai possessed those white threads. Back when Michi had first come to her compound for help, Genkai had left no stone unturned in her quest to grant Michi the best instruction available, but all she'd unearthed was the discovery that no Spirit World denizens read the Loom of Life as Michi did. It was a skill once much admired amongst humans, but that time was long passed, and just as it had grown rare in this plane, its practitioners thinning in number, it remained all but unheard of amongst the afterlife's inhabitants.

Which meant if Dai was like Taki, no jailer would discover it in a Spirit World prison—or wherever it was they brought captives sentenced to death.

"I thought we had time," Asato said, "but we don't. Obviously."

"So what's our goal today?"

"First and foremost, we need your appraisal of Junko's Loom." Kaito looked out the window, directing his flat gaze at the cars whizzing past. "If there's even a thread of white in it, then we'll bring her out to Genkai."

"And I'll try to get a read on her," Yana said. "Based on my past interactions with her, I've got a pretty good lock on her personality. I mean, it's probably not much compared to what you manage with your transplants, Michi, but it's something."

Asato nodded, one jerky bob of his head, and as if fueled by the voicing of their plan, he laid on fresh gas, weaving through the traffic on the expressway with a fervor that made her stomach spin. Even still, she gripped her seatbelt between shaking fingers and silently urged him to drive faster, to get them to Junko with all the speed they could manage—because they needed answers. Fast.

Before Spirit World came calling directly.

* * *

Michi had expected an apartment building. All the transfers she'd placed so close to the city had been put up in flats. It had always been a matter of cost-effectiveness weighed against privacy. In the end, rent values tended to win over seclusion.

But Junko had been granted a full-blown home.

It was a surprisingly cute little place. Modern. Clean cut. Well maintained. A gravel path led to the cherry red front door, surrounded on either side by perfectly manicured rock gardens. Asked to guess, Michi would've thought this place housed some artist in her early twenties. She'd have pictured a vivacious young woman, her dress exactingly on trend, her nails painted in a pink that arrested attention. She would not have imagined the demon who lived within.

As Asato parallel parked, Yana produced Junko's records file and passed it up to Michi. She skimmed through its pages quick as she could. What she read within pumped fresh ice into her frozen gut.

Like so many of their transfers, Junko had escaped veritable hell in Demon World. In her case, a trafficking ring selling her not for her body—as one might expect—but for her powers. Judging by the tone of Hiei's appraisal, Junko's ability to step in and out of the flow of time made her a rare commodity sought by many of Demon World's most powerful fiends. Her actual skill was limited, her class unimpressive if Hiei's poorly hidden dismissal was anything to go by, but given the right training, it seemed she could've been quite the weapon.

It had been a fate Junko rebelled against, and after an opportune escape, she'd sought refuge here in Human World, where no one knew what she was, where she could live whatever life she pleased without fear of being chained to another's will or sold off to the highest bidder.

Michi suspected she'd get along well with quiet, withdrawn Ryota.

They left the car in somber silence and crossed the street in a line, Yana blazing the way. The neighborhood was quiet, few cars traversing the hedge-lined roads, but distantly Michi made out the laughter of children, playing in some tucked away backyard. Something about the far off quality of their giggles raised the hairs on the back of her neck, and she hugged her jacket tighter, swiping her palms up and down her triceps in a half-hearted attempt to contest the chill in her bones. The utter stillness of Junko's rock gardens struck Michi as decidedly unnatural, like this place had been pulled out of the fabric of the world, its presence like a run in the Loom of Life.

A snag.

An aberration.

If the boys' felt it, too, they gave no sign, and Yana strode to the door undeterred, ringing the doorbell with a long jab of his thumb. No immediate answer came.

In the lull, Michi rocked from foot to foot. Her hands had ceased their meandering attempt at friction and now cupped her elbows, fingertips digging into every angular jut of bone. As Yana punched the doorbell again, Michi pushed her awareness wider, combing past the tangle of mustard and scarlet hanging over the boys and trying to hone in on Junko.

Easier said than done.

Spotting a Loom she had no familiarity with was a trick she'd never quite mastered. The world was such a jumble of threads that picking out an unknown weave often felt like trying to tune a walkie talkie to one signal out of a hundred presets. There was so much background static to filter out, so many filaments and strings she usually ignored that came rushing to the forefront once she stopped actively blocking them. After all, though focusing on the Looms of individuals was the only way she managed to maintain even a degree of sanity, threads weren't a quality of people alone.

And as Michi cast her territory out like a net trawling the sea, the rest sharpened into focus. She witnessed it all in vivid, blinding detail. The way the boys' Looms bled into one another, not linked by the Ties That Bind, but interacting nonetheless, Yana's agitation feeding into Kaito, Kaito's unease awakening further anxiety in Asato, and on and on. The interactions between the threads of the world itself, of its plants and rocks and winds, all entirely without color and yet somehow perceptible, a presence felt against her skin like the invisible itch of an unforeseen cobweb caught across her arms. The watered-down Looms of animals, like those of the birds flitting overhead, pale greens and yellows coloring their hunt for food.

All of it crashed in on her, demanding attention, splitting her focus across a thousand inputs. Against that crush of information, she could barely hold her own, but she soldiered on, sifting through until a flash of white caught her eye.

Just like that, Junko's Loom crystalized. White. Black. Crimson. The same riotous snarl of color she'd seen in Taki before sending him to Genkai's.

From here, she couldn't make out more. Not well enough to discern which bolts of thread were merely part of Junko's Loom versus which were woven through the demon's core, in any event. But she was able to get a bead on Junko's location.

"I think she's behind the house," she said as Yana executed a third strike on the defenseless doorbell. "Is there a backyard?"

"Uh, yeah." He jumped off the stoop in a flurry of elbows and knees. The stones of the rock garden whined beneath his sneakers, but he tramped on without concern, apparently unbothered by the force of his landing. Asato and Kaito gave chase at once, and the boys disappeared beyond the corner of the house in a matter of heartbeats.

Michi remained behind, sagging against the front door, her forehead pressed to the cold wood. Piece by piece, she boxed away her territory, shutting out what little she could—the ghostly touch of world's invisible threads, the interweavings of disparate Looms, the fleeting colors of animals. Locking her awareness down to only that which she'd never managed to blank out. Human emotions. Bright and blinding in their own right, but nothing next to the Loom of Life's full onslaught.

Only when the racket building in her temples had quieted back to a whimper did she climb down from the stoop and pick her way across the rocks.

Around the corner, a privacy fence waited, tall enough to block her view of all but Yana's heavily gelled high-top. It did nothing, however, to obscure the white threads snaking through Junko's Loom, and so, as Michi stepped through the half-ajar gate and the backyard opened before her, she located the demon instantly.

Junko lay nestled in the roots of a sprawling tree. Dirty. Bedraggled. As if she'd been sleeping in the dirt for days.

The boys had arrayed themselves in a half-moon around the hunkered demon, and Yana was murmuring in the softest tone Michi had ever heard him conjure. As she drew near, he took a step closer to the recoiling apparition, one hand extended, and crouched, lowering his massive frame into an awkward squat.

"What are you doing out here, Junko?"

A flash of bared teeth answered him, incisors sharp as knives.

Yana tried again. "Want to go inside? Maybe get cleaned up a bit? We want to talk—" he gestured a mitt-like hand over his shoulder, the jerky sweep of his wrist encompassing their misfit band "—if you're up for it."

Another sneer. This time complete with accompanying growl.

Michi buried her fists inside her sleeves and sucked down a gulp of cold, steadying air. Black anger licked against her territory, writhing threads of pure ink snaking across Junko's snarled Loom. White ran like an undercurrent beneath the rest, twisting not just through the tapestry of Junko's bucking emotions, but also deep into her core. Staring at those bleached threads brought tears pricking to Michi's eyes, but she couldn't bring herself to look away.

They were hypnotic. Calling to her, snapping and beckoning and reaching. Drawing her in. Asking her to join them.

Yana was still talking, his rough voice at odds with the gentle manner he'd adopted, but when Michi curled a hand over his muscled shoulder, he fell silent, dark eyes darting to her in question as she knelt in the dirt, heedless of her tights.

"Hello, Junko," she said, dipping her forehead toward the earth in a polite bow. "I don't believe we've met before. I'm Michi, another transition aide like Yana. Sorry to have disturbed you today, but we were worried about you."

Junko leveled her with a glare so baleful it put even Hiei's worst to shame. Her movements possessed the choppy precision of a pigeon pecking in the grass, head darting, attention focused on Yana one moment and Michi the next, seemingly without having stirred at all. "Don't be," she hissed, spitting the statement like a shard of glass aimed with pointed care. "I'm fine, human."

Michi refused to let her smile waver. "You don't seem fine." She indicated Junko's huddled position amongst the tree roots. "This can't be comfortable—"

Fury black as the darkest night billowed through Junko's Loom. "Don't tell me what I am or am not."

Yana fidgeted, and Michi could feel his eyes on her. Worry leaked across his threads in streaks of goldenrod. Asato and Kaito bore signs of it, too. But the trio kept their tongues, letting her try to utilize the one advantage they might have.

"My apologies," she said, palms held out in placating surrender. The chill in the air turned her breaths into white clouds, and as she drew in another stabilizing lungful, the cold settled like chips of ice in her chest. "Perhaps I should speak only for myself, then. Truthfully, I'd like to go inside, if you're willing. The weather is getting to me."

As innocuous an offer as she could formulate.

And still entirely ineffectual.

"Leave me be." Junko's focus cut back to Yana in that hummingbird way of hers. "I told you I wanted nothing to do with you."

He winced, lips parting on some ill-thought justification, but Michi stayed his rebuttal with a quick touch to his wrist.

Navigating Junko wasn't like consoling Taki. Michi lacked the years-long knowledge of the woman's inner-workings, and they had no history to draw on, no rapport to bolster her efforts. But in theory, convincing Junko to open up shouldn't have been so different from convincing Taki. The same white threads marred their Looms. The same unfounded anger darkened their personalities.

She cleared her throat and reasserted her smile, urging her voice to stay level. Unworried. Disarmingly at ease. "Had Yana introduced you to Taki? He's another local transplant." A laugh tumbled from her lips, calculated and intentional. "Well, he's a bit of a drive from here, but local enough."

She already knew the answer. No, they'd never met. If they had, Michi would've been present for the introduction, there to ensure everything ran smoothly.

But that wasn't the point of asking.

Still, if there'd been any doubt, the flinty stare Junko leveled at her put the matter to rest.

Ignoring the demon's unconcealed rage, Michi carried on as if Junko had answered properly. "That's a shame. We'll need to make the introduction soon. Regardless, though, I've only brought him up because recently Taki has complained of an anger whose source he couldn't locate, and I'm wondering if others among our transplants are experiencing similar feelings." An incredibly mild way to put Taki's state of affairs, but she didn't want to push her luck. Speaking too directly could drive Junko in precisely the wrong direction if Michi wasn't careful.

"You think I'm like him."

"Not necessarily—"

Junko snarled, razor-like incisors flashing. "But you're wrong."

Tension brewed in Michi's gut, boiling and noxious and terrifying, but none of its quavering fear found its way into her voice. "About which piece?"

"All of it."

At Michi's side, Yana had gone perfectly still, like a statue frozen in time. In her periphery, she made out Asato and Kaito, each motionless but for the faint rise and fall of their chests with every labored breath.

Fear hung over them all in impenetrable swathes of forest green thread.

"I've realized what an imbecile I was to come here," Junko continued. Rage clawed through every syllable, crackling like black fire, licking flames scorching against Michi's territory. "This world is nothing more than trash. A poor mark on all of existence. I detest it." Her lips pulled back, revealing every over-sharp tooth in her mouth. "And I detest you."

And just like that, in the space of a single breath, the backyard plunged straight into hell.

It all happened at once—Junko surging into a crouch, two territories snapping into existence, a shout as loud as a gunshot.

Then Yana shoved Michi backward. She thudded into the grass, her skin crawling, and scrambled farther out of harm's way. Around Yana's hulking frame, she could only spot half of Junko, but even that was enough to piece together the blurred moment of calamity.

The demon had attacked, a paring knife clutched in one narrow fist, and now, her arm hung suspended. Unmoving. Knife catching the sunlight and casting blinding reflections into the sky.

Asato stood to Michi's right, one foot planted firmly on Junko's shadow, locking the apparition into place as securely as if she'd been encased in concrete, and though Kaito remained out of sight, somewhere at Michi's back, she knew the second territory had been his, unfurling a violence-free zone across the backyard. Their reactions had been instantaneous. Practically fast as lightning.

Yet even still, they hadn't stopped the knife from catching Michi's cheek.

The world spun as she swiped her thumb across her face. It came away sticky and wet, blood smearing across her fingerprint, gathering in every groove and whorl of her skin.

Dully, over the rush of adrenaline pumping in her ears, she was cognizant of Yana asking if she was okay, but how she answered— _if_ she answered—she wasn't sure. Then he'd heaved an arm around her shoulders and hauled her to her feet, leading her away from Junko's statuesque body.

The next hour passed in a chaotic blur. The boys argued a bit, Kaito dropping more than one snide remark, but soon Asato got Genkai on the line and a second heated debate ensued.

Somehow, Junko needed to be transported to the compound. After all, she couldn't be trusted in the presence of humans. They couldn't risk another Dai incident. But how that travel would be achieved was a point of contention. Getting Junko into Asato's car seemed an impossible feat—one Genkai insisted could only be solved by knocking the apparition unconscious. Asato resisted—valiantly, considering the heated irritation in Genkai's barked responses—but ultimately, Yana took the decision out of her cousin's hands. Issuing a firm but resolute apology, he drove a fist into the demon's temple and knocked her senseless.

The sight turned Michi's stomach, but as Asato and Yana bundled Junko into the car, Kaito informed her in hushed tones that demons healed better than humans. A concussion, he claimed, was of little concern.

After that, Yana climbed into the driver's seat and Asato slid into the back with Junko, his territory still active, allowing him to ensure that no matter how soon the apparition awoke, she'd be unable to so much as lift a finger. Asato tossed some instructions to Kaito—something about letting the Detectives know they were bringing in another demon—then rolled up his window and Yana started the engine.

Once they'd driven off, Kaito took charge, and though Michi still felt as though the world was off-kilter, he remained as cool and detached as ever as he navigated them onto the appropriate bus route home. If their ride was awkward, she was too rattled to notice, and by the time he left her on her doorstep, she'd half-convinced herself the whole day had been nothing but a dream, a nightmare from which she'd wake up and discover Shuichi still lying beside her, tangled up in her sheets.

Nonetheless, as she tramped up the stairs, absently running a finger over her still stinging cheek, there was no denying the reality of the situation. Another demon had snapped. First Taki, then Dai, now Junko. And if three had succumbed to whatever was happening, who was to say more transplants wouldn't follow?

Or that they hadn't already?

* * *

AN: I am attempting to write this note the night before I'm posting, but my brain has turned to mush, and I have no idea what to say here other than I CAN'T WAIT TO POST NEXT WEEK. So yup, that's a thing.

To be somewhat more logical: more demons breaking down! More white threads! All the drama! (That wasn't more logical, was it? I guess I should just go to sleep. Y'all don't need my ramblings anyway.)

Ginormous thanks to everyone who reviewed this past week. I cannot possibly overstate how wonderful it is to hear from you all, old voices and new. And it's obscenely fun to hear everyone's theories, especially regarding Kurama and how much he does or does not know about Michi. (Answers to that soon, friends!) Shout out to all you lovelies: ahyeon, Antiqua-hime17, knightsqueen05, o-dragon, Deanna Prince, CrystalVixen93, WistfulSin, Emzybubble, Star Charter, Guest, and ChocolateKisses9!

(Also, for anyone interested, I posted a guide to thread colors on my Tumblr earlier this week. Pop over there (I'm hereafteryyh) if you want to take a peek!)


	14. Bolt from the Blue

In the weeks after Dai's rampage, chaos grabbed Michi's life by the reins and ran wild. Her days blurred into a mishmash of transplant check-ins, cram sessions spent studying with Runa, and all too brief moments aboard the subway alongside Shuichi, nary a heartbeat to breathe sandwiched between.

After Shuichi had left her that morning in her apartment, she'd vowed to tell him the truth in all its rotten glory at the next even remotely opportune chance. Problem being, such an occasion never came. Between Asato, Kaito, and Yana laying claim to her every free second, another Saturday spent trekking out to Genkai's temple, and a week of finals bearing down on her, she wouldn't have had time for a date even if _Shuichi_ had a moment to spare himself—and he didn't. As hectic as her days were, his seemed somehow busier, chock full of corporate meetings and friend emergencies.

Which meant her secret remained safely hers.

And it ate away at her, a slow, deadly, inescapable torture, wearing her down until it almost seemed worthwhile to simply blurt out every sordid detail right there beside him on the subway. She didn't. Of course, she didn't. But oh, how she wanted to.

The worst part of it all was that Asato's dogged investigation turned up no new answers. They knew exactly what they had for weeks now: that first psychics and now demons were losing control of their powers, that those demons—and likely the psychics, too—had inexplicable white in their Looms, and nothing more.

No clues presented themselves. No cause awaited discovery.

There were just more white threads. More irate demons. More secrets to keep.

By the time her finals week hit in full, the weight of everything piling atop her shoulders had ground her down to little more than dust and frayed edges, and she seized the opportunity to bow out of further reconnaissance, at least until her tests were over and her essays handed in. Asato groused and complained, as she knew he would, but ultimately relented.

Free of the arcane at last, she threw herself at her exams with a zeal that sickened even Runa. She studied and drafted essays and revised—and tried desperately not to let guilt consume her. It was a battle she was losing, day by day, inch by inch.

She had to tell Shuichi soon.

Before she couldn't bear it any longer.

* * *

The ring of Michi's phone disturbed her late on the final Thursday of the semester. She had only one test remaining, a back-breaker in Cognitive Psychology that was infamous for its ability to tank an entire semester's worth of solid grades, and she was curled on her couch with her notes firmly in hand, the paper crinkled and creased to oblivion, as the call came through.

She groped for her phone blindly and shoved it to her ear after only the most cursory glance at the screen. "What's up, Shade?"

"Hello to you, too, Weaver."

"I don't have time for small talk," she said, flipping her notes to the back of the page. "Cut to the chase."

"I miss the days when you were meek and well-mannered and—"

"Shade."

He huffed. "Right, to the chase, then. Genkai's holding a holiday party—or, well, a holiday party is being thrown at her shrine, with or without her buy-in—and I think you should come."

"No thanks."

Another huff. This time with more weight. "Seriously, Weaver, it's officially time you meet the old Spirit Detectives. Properly, I mean. Hell, time you meet the whole gang. No more avoiding it. You lasted five years. The gig is up. These rogue psychics and demons are linked—I think we all know that by now—and we'd all be better served if we worked together on solving this damn mystery."

Giving up any pretense of multi-tasking, she set aside her notes and rolled her head back. The ceiling greeted her, featureless and without distraction. "You don't need me in order to work with the Detectives."

And she couldn't afford to get tangled up with Yusuke again. Not until she'd come clean to Shuichi. She had the date picked at last. Six nights from now. Her semester would be over and he'd taken a whole week off work, so they'd locked the day down for much needed time together—time she would use like the precious commodity it was.

In the interim, she refused to push the luck she'd already stretched so thin.

"Yeah, I _could_ work with them without you, but are you really going to sit here and tell me I can describe what's wrong with these demons' Looms better than you can?"

"I'm not attending some gathering full of old friends—"

"Yes, you are. I will come to your apartment, throw you over my shoulder, and lock you in my trunk if I have to, but you _are_ coming."

"Shade—"

"No, Weaver." She could practically feel his navy threads leaking through the phone. "It'll be good for you. It's time you got to know people like us, people who get this bizarre life we lead, caught between different worlds. The party's Saturday. We'll drive out together, we'll have fun, and then Sunday the whole crew of us can work out what's happening to our transplants. Trust me, you'll enjoy it."

Unlikely. "I hate parties."

He groaned.

She ignored him. "Don't act like I'm ridiculous. I've told you how horrible they are. All those Looms packed together, threads running loose, emotions warped and heightened as booze starts flowing. It's the definition of torture."

"Well, consider it good practice at controlling your territory then."

"Asato, I'm not going."

"Sure. Keep saying that. In any event, I'll be over at noon on Saturday. Be ready. Wear something nice. And pack an overnight bag."

Stubborn jerk.

He wasn't listening, and she knew—sure as she'd ever known anything—that he wasn't going to back down. She could argue until she was blue in the face, but he meant it. He'd kidnap her if that's what it took to drag her along.

Still, that didn't stop her from trying one more time. "You can't make me go."

This time he didn't even grace her with a direct answer. "Good luck on your last exam. See you Saturday."

Then the line clicked dead.

* * *

"Congratulations, Michi."

Those two words ignited an ache in Michi's chest as she left campus, finally free from a week of testing, her Cognitive Psychology exam officially behind her. That Shuichi had called the moment her test let out, despite how busy he'd been, despite how little they'd seen each other—goodness, that he'd remember the timing of her exam at all—stretched the abyss of guilt yawning in her gut to even greater depths.

"Thanks."

A brief pause, in which she made out the screeching holler of a voice that could only be Yusuke's, then Shuichi said, "I'll admit, you don't sound as enthused as I'd expected. Did it not go well?"

No. It went fine.

Better than fine.

She'd aced that exam so thoroughly that she'd finished with a half hour to spare. Only her own crushing need to utilize every available second to vet her answers had kept her in her seat through the whole testing period.

"Sorry, I'm just… distracted, I guess." She reached the crosswalk leading to Nako Square and drew to a halt, her focus drifting skyward. "Wednesday can't come soon enough."

His laugh should've lit her on fire. Usually it did. But not today.

When he spoke, there was no humor in his voice—just utmost, heart-rending sincerity. "I've missed you." Another shout burst in the background, and he sighed. "Apologies for Yusuke's obscenity, if you can hear him. I'm afraid I have to go."

"Sure. No problem."

"Talk soon, Michi. Congrats again."

And then he was gone.

* * *

Saturday, at noon on the dot, Asato texted, her ringtone pealing through her apartment. _-Kidnapping will commence in five.-_

Michi was ready for him, already dressed in her favorite sweater dress, a pair of deceptively heeled boots laced at her ankles, but she summoned the most indignant, pouty verve she could possibly muster and took the stairs two at a time, steady on her heels despite her boots' three-inch wedges. Emerging into the cold, wintery sunlight, she located Asato's car idling one house down and kept up her veneer of exasperation as she flounced down the sidewalk, yanked open the car door, threw her bag and winter coat in the back seat, and slumped into the worn leather.

It took only one sideways glance at her for Asato to burst into uproarious laughter, smacking a palm against the wheel. "You should pretend to be a pissed-off bitch more often, Weaver," he said as he pulled away from the curb. "That nose crinkle you're doing? Sheer perfection."

A grin cracked its way onto her lips, but she managed to stave off an aberrant giggle long enough to say, with utmost gravity, "I'm not _pretending_ anything."

Wiping his face clean of all emotion, he nodded solemnly. "Right. Of course. This is a hostage situation and we both know it."

"Precisely."

The cobalt amusement streaming across his Loom betrayed him, but she suspected it was no worse a traitor than the smile she couldn't shake. As much as she dreaded further entanglement with the Spirit Detective crew, she couldn't help the levity. Asato tended to have that effect on her, and with the fall semester conclusively left to antiquity, it was hard to hold onto the stress that had driven her into a spiral in the weeks since Dai's rampage.

Which wasn't to say the mere thought of Shuichi didn't send her teetering toward guilt-inspired panic attacks.

But she was in a better headspace. Mostly. And it seemed a conceivable reality that tonight wouldn't be complete torture.

"I should've known you'd put me to shame," Asato said.

Displeased with the quiet talk radio issuing from the car's speakers, Michi fiddled with the tuner, scanning through stations. "Meaning?"

"You're dressed like you're headed to a red-carpet event."

"Hardly."

He cocked his head, propping an elbow against the window and resting his chin atop his knuckles. "I mean, I could be wrong, but isn't that the dress you wore to Uncle Sato's wedding? Seems a little fancy for the occasion. And those boots? You're aware I'm not carrying you up Genkai's stairs, right? I don't care how high your heels are."

"They're wedges," she said, rolling her eyes, "and they're absurdly comfortable. It's going to be snowing in the mountains, I checked—and, by the way, I can't believe this party is going ahead in the middle of what might very well turn into a blizzard. But regardless, whether you believe it or not, these are the best shoes I have for trudging around in a snowstorm. Or, I should say, the best ones that could feasibly be worn with a dress."

"That sounded like a slew of excuses, but I can't be sure because I stopped listening after 'wedges.'"

"Jerk."

"You love me."

She focused out the window, trying in vain to exstinguish another affectionate smile. "Only sometimes."

"What kind of frequency are we talking?"

"Maybe one day a week? Two, if I'm feeling generous."

Immediately he launched into a spluttering spiel, half-defending himself, half-threatening to dump her on the side of the road, and this time, as she cranked her seat into a reclining position and got comfortable for the long ride ahead, she didn't try to suppress her laughter.

There was no guaranteeing this party would go flawlessly—in fact, it would almost certainly end with a crushing headache and a vendetta against Asato's bullish stubborn streak—but until then, perhaps it wouldn't prove quite as abhorrent as she'd feared. After all, any day spent ribbing Asato was bound to be a good one.

* * *

The first snowflakes were falling as Michi and Asato crested the top of Genkai's hell stairs. A previous storm must've hit sometime in the last few days because a coating of powder still clung beneath the trees, though at the rate the new flakes were tumbling down, it wouldn't be long until the remaining dusting mounted into inches.

But true to her word, Michi's boots had served her well, and even the slick stairs hadn't been enough to unseat her balance.

Asato hadn't fared so favorably, and he was still grumbling and rubbing his butt as they ducked through the temple's arched gateway and emerged into the yard beyond. The shrine's windows spilled golden light into the gathering snow. Contrasted against the clouds blotting out the sun, the temple seemed warm and welcoming—an almost convincing disguise. If Michi hadn't spent many a hellish day under Genkai's harsh tutelage within its halls, she may have been deceived.

As soon as they reached the porch steps, the door slid open, skidding back on its grooves.

Yukina stood in the threshold, one dainty hand clutching the doorjamb, the other sealed over her lips in an expression of surprise most comical on the demure apparition. "Michi?"

"Hey, Yukina. It's been too long."

"It has!" In a flurry, the lithe girl darted from the doorway and threw her arms around Michi's waist, drawing her into a tight hug. At the sight of Michi, lime surprise had rippled through her Loom, but as she cinched Michi into an even tighter embrace, her shock gave way to teal happiness and lavender affection, cocooning Michi in swathes of cool color.

Michi reciprocated the fondness, resting her cheek against the crown of Yukina's head. "How's life in the city?"

"Lovely. Sarayashiki is delightful."

Was it? Seemed an overly generous modifier. But Michi had no intentions of telling Yukina as much. The apparition's joy was too infectious for pessimistic rejoinders.

"And how's the boyfriend?"

Yukina eased back, tucking a smile behind the same hand as before, but Michi didn't miss the blush rising in her cheeks nor the strands of indigo love lancing through her threads. "Kazuma is wonderful."

Stepping across the threshold, Michi bent to unlace her boots. "Glad to hear it."

The next minutes passed in a bustle as Yukina swept a bow to Asato and ushered him inside, then guided them both down the hall. Decorations crowded the shrine's every corner, holiday banners hung from walls and festive statues tucked onto once dusty shelves. Sheepishly, Yukina admitted it had been her work.

"I love the winter spirit," she said as they entered the kitchen. On stocking-covered feet, she ghosted to a cutting board set by the sink and hefted the knife she must've left behind when she'd come to great them, wielding it with startling ferocity at a mound of peeled fruit. If Michi had to guess, Genkai was somewhere close by, as yet uninterested in company, and upon sensing their arrival, she'd sent Yukina to play benevolent host on her behalf. "The cold and the snow remind me of the best parts of my home in Demon World. Kazuma says my exuberance is perfect for the season."

Asato whistled lowly as he lifted a miniature tree, its fake needles made of silver tinsel. He poked it with befuddled curiosity. "Your commitment is certainly something…"

Muffling a laugh, Michi hefted her bag open and rifled through its contents until she unearthed two bottles of champagne. "Was this party your idea?"

"Not mine alone, but I had the most time on hand for organizing." Pausing in chopping a series of apples, Yukina frowned at the bottles. "You didn't have to bring anything. I've got it covered."

"The least I could do was provide some bubbles." Michi winked before crossing to the fridge and tucking the champagne within, barely managing to find a free space amongst the packed interior. "When did you get here?" she asked, surveying the kitchen counters, all laden with appetizers and finger foods, more decorations dotting what little surface area remained.

"I took the train out on Thursday."

"And she's been commandeering my kitchen ever since."

As soon as Genkai's dry complaint hit his ears, Asato snapped into a stiff bow. "Thank you for hosting us, Master."

The old psychic loosed an impatient breath through her nose. "Stuff the formality, Kido. You're going to abscond with my booze just like all the rest in an hour. Let's not pretend otherwise." Her gaze cut to Michi. "I'm surprised to see you here, Kuroki. What ended your self-imposed sequester?"

Michi offered a hapless shrug. "My options were to come willingly or be bound, trussed, and tossed in Asato's trunk. Which is to say I had no real choice at all."

"Damn straight." Downright cackling, Asato dodged her half-hearted swipe and ducked back into the hall. "We the only ones here yet?"

"Do you mean, are you the only idiots who arrived prematurely to disrupt my damn peace? Because yes, that you are."

A peek at the clock above the stove revealed that it was a little past four, which put their arrival early, but not ungodly so. Still, no harm in foisting the blame off on Asato. "Blame my captor," Michi said. Then, as Genkai turned her scowl on Asato and he booked it down the corridor, Michi rolled up her sleeves and cranked the sink faucet. "So, Yukina, how can I help?"

* * *

Assisting Yukina proved the perfect distraction as other guests began to trickle in. A handful of psychics with manifested territories arrived not long after Michi and Asato, bringing with them resounding chatter and the first popped beer cans. As their number mounted, the press of their Looms grew, threads weaving a blinding tapestry within the shrine's narrow halls.

For as long as she could manage, Michi remained with Yukina, tucked away in the kitchen. Newcomers stuck their heads through doorway, but usually hung around only long enough for a quick round of introductions before disappearing once more, and Michi reveled in the relative peace of the cluttered room. Yukina's Loom had a softness to it that had always put her at ease—a quality she was more than willing to take advantage of.

Eventually, however, Genkai stomped through the door and, with a cluck of her tongue, demanded attention. "Kuroki, follow me."

Uncertain what she'd done to earn Genkai's ire but confident whatever followed couldn't be good, Michi finished scrubbing a mixing bowl, then set it atop the drying rack and toweled off her damp hands. Her bag waited beneath the kitchen table, and she scooped it up, slinging the strap over her shoulder. "Back in bit, Yukina."

"No need." The apparition flashed a radiant smile. "Those dishes are the last clean-up we had left. Go enjoy yourself. I'll be along in a bit."

Michi hesitated a moment longer, teetering on the balls of her feet, loathe to let her sanctuary evaporate, but recognized defeat and urged her legs into motion, trailing Genkai into the hall. Looms assaulted her instantly, a constant influx of blues. Happiness. Amusement. Contentment. An ocean of threads seeking to draw her under. The brunt of the attendees had congregated in the shrine's most open living area, and Genkai cut a path in the opposite direction, shoulders thrust back and head held high.

Resisting the urge to squint against her territory's assault, Michi murmured, "Why do I get the impression I'm going to let Yukina down and _not_ enjoy this?"

"The party? Or where I'm taking you?"

"Your pick."

Genkai's laughter struck a delicate balance between outright snicker and restrained snort. "Smart girl."

They fell back to silence, and as they passed the front door, it slid open, revealing a snow-covered Yana. "Michi! I can't believe you're actually here." Before she could evade him, he'd yanked her into a hug, powdery snow coming loose from his jacket and seeping into her dress, flakes melting along her neckline, chilly against her flushed skin.

Kaito hovered at Yana's back, half-exposed to the elements, fresh snow accumulating in his hair. Behind his glasses, he blinked in a decidedly nonplussed manner, seemingly as disinterested in attending this party as Michi had been.

"No wasting my time, boys," Genkai barked.

At once, Kaito stiffened, stark crimson in his Loom announcing his irritation at being lumped into Genkai's order, and Yana retracted his arms, releasing Michi in a scramble, a startled squawk accompanying the lime flicking through his threads.

He fell into an awkward bow. "Sorry, Master Genkai. Didn't see you there."

She huffed, and Michi spread her hands in helpless surrender before trudging after the psychic deeper into the temple. By now, it was easy enough to guess their destination. Michi had walked this hallway often enough. It had, after all, been her home for three of the most wretched months of her life.

"Has Taki not improved?"

At this point, it probably wasn't a question worth asking, but she couldn't help it. Every night she fell asleep hoping she'd wake to a text from Asato, to the revelation that at last Taki had returned to normal, and every morning, she woke to nothing, to not so much as a stitch of good news.

Genkai stopped before Taki's door. Tension played across her Loom in a mosaic of mustard and moss, weaving into a tapestry of apprehension. "You tell me."

When Michi had visited in early December, she'd seen Taki only for a brief moment, sneaking a quick peek inside his room at Genkai's behest. He'd been asleep—or, at least, feigning slumber—and she'd stayed only long enough to confirm that no further white had bleached his core before fleeing back to the safety of the shrine's distant veranda and hours spent deciphering Genkai's Loom. But now, her hand hovering halfway to the door, Michi hesitated, recalling the effect he'd had on her during their last genuine conversation with such vivid detail that new tears gathered on her lashes at the mere thought.

Gruffly, Genkai shoved Michi's wrist back to her side. "No need to go in, girl. You're clearly at wit's end avoiding my other visitors as is." Her tone indicated in no uncertain terms that _visitors_ was a reluctant stand-in for _trespassers_ , but Michi was too relieved that she'd been spared direct contact with Taki's Loom to feel even a flicker of offense. "Read him from here. Tell me what you see. Then we'll both return to the party and pretend it's not purgatory incarnate."

Drawing in a bolstering breath, Michi nodded, then splayed her palm against the door's paneling, focusing her awareness beyond its thin surface.

Finding Taki's threads was no challenge. They presented themselves at once, a vicious knot of white and black so stark and brittle it seemed liable to shatter at any moment. It was as though his strings had morphed into dry straw or filaments of ice, thin and inelastic and breakable. They possessed no flowing color, no false sense of movement.

They'd gone hard. Unchanging.

And they _cut_.

Right down to the bone. Straight through her skull. Carving lacerations across her soul.

"Worse," she gasped, stumbling onto her heels. She sealed the pads of her fingers over her eyes, as if they might be enough to drown Taki out, and sagged against the far wall. "He's worse."

"By what degree?"

Curls tumbled across Michi's forehead as she shook her head, a wild, desperate assertion of bewilderment. "I don't know." She forced her lashes to part and discovered Genkai waiting, knees bent, sunk into what even Michi's untrained eyes could identify as a fighting stance.

"Is he a threat?"

For a single, perilous moment, Michi nearly said yes.

She flashed back to Junko's sun-dappled backyard, back to her knees pressing into the dirt, back to that terrifying heartbeat of vulnerability before the boys surged into action, back to the cut across her cheek that had required a week of painstaking make-up application to keep hidden—and despite herself, despite how long she'd known Taki, despite how much she trusted him deep in her gut, she couldn't help imagining his stoneskin fists curling around her throat, choking the air from her lungs. How easy it would be for him to crush her. Huge, hulking Taki. The kindest soul she'd ever known reduced to wrath and confusion and unpredictability.

But she bucked those fears away. He wasn't Junko. He wasn't a stranger. He was still Taki. _Her_ Taki.

"I don't think so."

Genkai's eyes narrowed. "Thinking and knowing are different beasts, girl."

"I'm aware." Urging herself upright, Michi pushed away from the wall and teased careful fingers through her curls, righting their tumbled cascade. With each passing heartbeat, she calmed her breathing and willed her pulse to steady. "I don't know what's wrong with his threads or what they're doing to him. But if he's still in control of himself, he would never hurt anyone. You know that as well as I do."

"Perhaps, but you've hit the nail square on its stubborn head, haven't you? It's a question of control, and I'm inclined to believe his has worn thing."

Michi bit her lip, unable to meet Genkai's critical gaze any longer. Her focus settled instead on the door beside Taki's. Two weeks ago, Junko had been tucked within, but now her Loom had gone missing.

Genkai didn't miss Michi's shifted attention. "We've transferred Junko back to Demon World," she said bluntly. "While we seek to unravel Taki here, the border patrol's officials will attempt the same with Junko."

A smart plan. A good one.

And yet, it stung like a slap—proof that the halfway house had failed in some way, and despite her reluctant role in its operation, Michi couldn't help feeling she shouldered some of that blame. In the end, she was the only one capable of truly _seeing_ what was wrong with their apparitions, but she useless in solving the white threads' riddle—powerless at the one time she wished her territory might be of value.

Lips pressed into a tight grimace, Genkai swiveled. "That's enough for now. You've confirmed my suspicions. We'll discuss further with Kido and the boys tomorrow."

The boys. A description that meant Yana and Kaito and Asato for Michi, but referenced an entirely different crew of young men for Genkai. The ex-Spirit Detectives. Truly unavoidable at last.

Michi sighed. Her fingers curled tight around the strap of her overnight bag, and she dithered in the hall a moment, grasping for a composure that still evaded her, before calling after Genkai, "Should I take my old room?"

Genkai paused at the corridor's end, about to turn out of sight. "I'd assumed you would. But be quick about it. I can sense my old dimwit of an apprentice climbing the stairs. He's bound to make quite the entrance."

Even knowing what little she did of Yusuke, Michi didn't doubt Genkai's evaluation one bit, and while she suspected she wouldn't much mind missing his arrival, she was also quite sure there'd be few fates worse than getting caught up in it. Better to return to the main room and hunker somewhere safe than risk passing the front door right as Yusuke made his appearance.

Jitters still inhabiting her fingers, she ducked into the bedroom two down from Taki's and made quick work of dropping off her bag beside the bed, peeking in the mirror only a moment, just long enough to confirm it wasn't completely obvious how thoroughly her territory had just put her through the ringer. Besides a faint pallor to her cheeks, she looked passable. Nervous, maybe. But not on the verge of falling to pieces.

A small victory, but one she savored nonetheless.

As she turned to leave, a stack of psychic wards atop the bed's pillow caught her eye, and though Genkai had made no reference to them and would almost certainly rebut Michi's appreciation if she offered it, Michi couldn't squash a flutter of affection for the gruff woman. Hours from now, when she crawled into bed, her head clamoring, those wards would be a precious commodity. Perhaps she shouldn't have been so surprised that Genkai had thought to leave them. Perhaps she should've given her mentor more credit. But even still, she clung to that token of kindness, using it to shore up her strength and riding its potency back through the halls.

Like as not, it wouldn't sustain her all night, but it was enough for now.

And that would have to do.

* * *

A handful more guests had arrived while she'd been gone, among them Kiyoshi Mitarai, a fellow psychic Asato had introduced her to a few years back. He snagged her for a minute's polite chitchat, but as a commotion out front disrupted the milling visitors, Michi slipped away from him and wove a path to Asato's side. He'd staked claim to a wide-ledged window and perched atop its sill, elbows braced on his knees.

It was as good a spot as any to weather the Detectives' arrival. Quick access to the hall. A short exit path to the back door. If she got overwhelmed, fresh air wasn't far off.

Eyes lighting up at the sight of her, Asato tipped his beer in greeting. "I was starting to think you'd bowed out already. Where'd you duck off to?"

"Genkai took me to Taki."

His grin waned. Goldenrod asserted itself amongst his threads' previous cobalt. "And?"

Michi evaded his gaze, frowning toward the distant front hall and swarm of Looms that had just entered, sending threads through the shrine like licking flames, setting her territory ablaze. "It sounds like she's planning a debriefing for the morning. Why don't we save this chat for then?"

Asato downed the rest of his beer, then dragged the back of his wrist across his mouth. "That bad, huh?"

"Definitely not party talk."

Sighing, he glanced toward the hallway, and together, they observed Yukina dart from the kitchen, practically flying toward the growing tumult on the front porch. A hoarse, distinctly male voice hollered her name, and Michi vaguely made out Yukina answering with an excited, "Kazuma!"

"So do you want a formal introduction?" Asato asked. "Or shall we let it happen naturally?"

"Naturally," Michi answered without hesitation, though really, there weren't many introductions left. She could've gone her whole life without knowing Hiei as well as she already did, and she'd had enough run-ins with Yusuke to last her until the afterlife. Which left only the other two. Kazuma and Kurama. Yukina's beloved. And the fox.

Whatever that meant.

"Fair enough," Asato said, shooting her a lopsided grin.

Anticipation hovered about him in waves of mossy green, eager excitement setting his knee bouncing. Watching him crane forward, his focus locked on the living room's entrance, it was impossible to miss how much these strangers meant to him. The case he'd worked with them had left indelible marks upon his soul, and in turn, he viewed the Spirit Detectives like gods, mythical men who existed beyond their human—or demon—skins.

They were as tied up in his sense of self and purpose as his territory and the halfway house. In them, he'd found some sort of anchor, a mooring by which to retain himself at sea.

That magic connecting Asato to them and their arcane world had never sparked for her. She'd certainly never felt it in her terse, business-like meetings with Hiei. Nor had it surfaced in her interactions with Yusuke. Not since she knew what he was, anyway.

Maybe that first night, sitting beside Shuichi, witnessing the kinship of the Ties That Bind dancing between the two men—maybe then she'd felt some small smidgeon of Yusuke's charisma. Except, how much of that had derived not from the former Detective but from the wonder of Shuichi and his Loom, she couldn't say.

Even still, the buzz in the room was contagious, and she couldn't pull her gaze from the entry hall as Yukina reappeared, a tall, young man on her heels. He had a shock of curly orange hair, though melting snow had slicked the strands flat around his temples, and his grin split from ear to ear, indigo love spilling across his Loom in sweeping swathes as Yukina murmured something to him and he threw his head back with laughter.

This must be Kazuma.

A heartbeat later, Yusuke sauntered through the archway into the living room, an arm slung around Keiko's shoulders, his green jacket gone black at the shoulders where snow had soaked into the cloth. As always, he crackled like an electric spark, threads alive in a teal that seemed almost fluorescent.

It shouldn't have surprised her to see Keiko. After all, she'd guessed Yusuke might have told the girl the truth about himself. Nonetheless, she startled as the brunette swept in at Yusuke's side. Yet another person she'd have to swear to secrecy. At least until Wednesday.

Across the room, a holler went up from a brawny, oddly dressed demon, and Yusuke halted at the sound, throwing his arms out wide. "Oy, Chu! Didn't expect to see you here!"

Behind him, the flow of newcomers ground to a standstill, and in the moment's pause before Keiko tugged Yusuke forward, Michi's territory caught against pearlescent threads, strings in indefinable shades that gleamed in the gaps between Yusuke and Kazuma, connecting their Looms like steely cords.

The Ties That Bind.

Attached to Yusuke once again.

"How is that possible?" she whispered.

Asato's head swung her way. His eyebrows swept toward his hairline. "What was that?"

Words failed her.

Before Yusuke and Shuichi, she'd never seen the Ties at all. They'd been a myth. Extraneous teachings Genkai had touched on merely to be thorough. And yet, somehow, against all odds, she'd now witnessed them twice. With Yusuke both times.

And, as though noticing the bonds between Yusuke and Kazuma had heightened her awareness, she picked up on more Ties, stretching backward from both men, into the obscured hall beyond. More Threadbrothers?

How many did Yusuke possess?

Then Keiko tugged her fiancé out of the way and a diminutive, all-too-familiar figure in black emerged. Hiei. Scowling, abrasive, brash Hiei. The last person in the world she'd have anticipated might be anyone's Threadbrother. Yet there he stood, Ties lashing his Loom to both Yusuke's and Kazuma's and to another, to one still half-hidden in the hall—

Pale.

Washed out.

Waxen.

The world skewed sideways, the ground peeling away from her feet as her breathing went jagged and she sagged into the windowsill, grasping thoughtlessly for Asato, her fingers latching around his knee, desperate for something to keep her steady.

She didn't need the Loom's owner to step into the light. She didn't need to see his scarlet hair or glimpse his emerald eyes. She didn't need his face to swing up, attention leaving Hiei and ranging over the gathering as he unwound a scarf from his neck. No, she didn't need any of that to recognize him. She'd needed only his Loom—his precious, beautiful, impossible Loom—and she'd known.

Asato's fingers closed over hers. "Weaver? What's wrong?"

But then Shuichi's eyes found hers and her heart ceased to beat.

For weeks, she'd been falling. Plummeting and plummeting and plummeting in a descent she hadn't wanted to stop. Until now, quite suddenly, with a ferocity like whiplash, that fall had changed shape. It no longer resembled a leap from a diving high board or the freefall of a skydive. There was none of the thrill of those drops, none of the fizzing excitement or breathtaking anticipation, because this was not a dive. This was not a choice.

This was tumbling from a bridge. This was careening off a cliff. This was plunging into hell.

As he looked at her, brows drawing together in consternation, no shock crossed Shuichi's Loom, no lime surprise exploded into being. Only the barest of flickers arose, a single thread of watery green unfurling. As if he were caught off guard, perhaps, but not as if his world had been turned on its head.

Not as if he'd just discovered the girl he was dating knew about the occult.

Not as if he felt even remotely as stunned as she did.

His lips parted, and she thought he might have said her name, but in her next breath, she was moving, beating a retreat down the path she'd catalogued before. Into the hall. Out the back door. Her feet plunged into snow, and her tights were soaked instantly, mushy cold seeping between her toes and creeping up her calves. The icy chill didn't stop her. She lurched forward seven more steps, pausing only when she hit the veranda's railing, and dragged frigid air into her lungs.

At her back, the door rattled open again. "Weaver?"

"Did you know?" she asked into the gathering night. The sun was dipping beneath the trees, casting long shadows across the clearing, and when Asato drew even with her and she glanced his way, she could make out nothing of his expression through the gloom.

"What?"

"Did you know who he was?" But even as she asked, she realized how foolish a question it was. No doubt Asato was precisely aware of Shuichi's true identity, but he couldn't have known to tell Michi as much. He couldn't have predicted who Michi had begun dating. She'd never given him more than Shuichi's first name.

Psychic her cousin may be, but a mind reader he was not.

"Weaver, I don't know what you're talking about." He curled a hand around her upper arm, leveraging her to face him. Worry wove across his Loom in tracts of coral. "What the hell happened in there?"

Her heart was still racing, pulse jumping in her temples, throbbing in her wrists, but she tried to wrest it aside, seizing desperately at some semblance of calm. There was an answer she needed, a truth she had to hear spoken aloud before she could allow herself to unravel completely.

"The redhead," she said, tone steadier than she could've imagined possible, "who came in last. What's his name?"

Asato blinked at her. Once. Twice. Three times. A crinkle creased above the bridge of his nose, confusion flooding past the coral in his threads.

And then he said it.

That single word.

That name that had haunted her since Taki's first meltdown.

"Kurama."

* * *

AN: Well... At long last, we're here. The moment that's been asked for nearly every chapter of this fic. Did it happen as you expected? Was Michi's reaction what you anticipated?

Next chapter (and two more after that...) deal with the aftermath, so don't you worry, now that we're here, we're digging in deep. From the second I conceived of this story, I had the last scene of this chapter and the half dozen that follow in my head. Everything else unfolded from these moments. I'm so beyond stoked to finally be sharing them with you all. I can only hope they've been worth the wait!

Huge thanks to last week's lovely reviewers: knightsqueen05, WistfulSin, ballet022, Dagdoth Fliesh, Guest, ahyeon, and o-dragon!


	15. Mottled in Mauve

Kurama.

Shuichi.

One person.

The same person.

Matching recognition sparked in Asato's dark eyes, his threads flashing lime before fading to goldenrod unease yet again. The hand he'd curled around Michi's arm tensed in a sympathetic squeeze. "Shit, Weaver."

The cold nipped at her, a stiff breeze casting falling snow into her eyes and stinging against her cheeks. Her feet, bare but for the thin protection of her tights, ached with the chill, and a glance downward revealed that Asato was equally unprepared for a jaunt into the storm, but none of that stopped him from tugging her into a hug, his arms folding around her back and crushing her close.

"Shit," he said again.

And shit it truly was.

Because all the clues she'd so foolishly ignored were starting to fall together, aligning like the jagged edges of a jigsaw puzzle. It was as though she'd dropped the piece meant for the puzzle's center, and without it, the image hadn't crystalized. But now she had it firmly in hand, that name echoing in her ears on endless loop— _Kurama, Kurama, Kurama_ —and with it, the truth snapped into focus.

It should've been so obvious. So painfully, blatantly, absurdly obvious.

Yusuke had practically told her that day they'd met in Taki's apartment, and now, despite the snowflakes swirling all around, it almost felt as though she was back in Sarayashiki, staring at his glowing fist, listening as he shouted about Kurama not telling him about her. Or like she was reliving the moment later, when they'd hunched together at the front door, Yusuke clarifying with incredulous intensity exactly which of the Spirit Detectives she knew.

Then she was in the park with Hiei, asking if she should've known who Kurama was. He'd answered in a way she'd assumed was meant to simply throw her off balance. _Not if he doesn't want you to._ She should've seen the reality hidden in his words. That she most certainly _knew_ Kurama—but not by _that_ name.

Because he hadn't wanted her to.

Hiei's parting phrase had been a clue, too. A reference to a fox. To Kurama. Being a fool. For what? She hadn't even tried to work it out then, but now the answer seemed all too evident.

A fool for dating her.

For dating someone so willfully blind.

But she was seeing now, and with every passing heartbeat, even as Asato eased back, coral threads spilling into the space between them, more pieces came together.

Ever since Ryota had mentioned Kurama was a fox demon, that word had nagged at her. Hiei's reference had been one reason, but it was only then that the other came back to her. That first date with Shuichi—no, Kurama. As Yusuke had left, he'd warned her not to be charmed by 'this old fox.'

An idiot.

Goodness, she was an idiot.

With Shuichi, she'd always felt as though she'd been cast behind a veil, a gauzy, ephemeral cloth that dulled her territory and granted her peace, but maybe there'd been another sort of shroud, too. One entirely of his making. One he'd chosen not to remove.

"Weaver," Asato murmured. "Say something. Please. You're scaring me."

Was she?

Somehow, she couldn't bring herself to care. After all, she was scared, too. Scared of dissolving into tears. Scared of unraveling at the seams. Scared of the ache already building within her. An ache that, for once, Shuichi—no, Kurama would not be able to ease.

Because maybe— _maybe_ —this pain wasn't so much in her head as it was in her chest.

"He knew."

"What?"

Her hands tightened into fists. Asato's button-down shirt creased beneath her fingers. "About me. Yusuke told him."

Another truth. One she knew with a certainty that burned in her bones. It had been another word game Yusuke had been only too happy to play. He'd sworn repeatedly that he wouldn't tell _Shuichi_. But the man she knew wasn't Shuichi to Yusuke. He was Kurama. Maybe he always had been. And for Yusuke, not telling Shuichi and not telling Kurama weren't equivalent promises.

So he had known. Shuichi—Kurama. Whoever he was.

He had known.

Therein lay the dagger that broke her. The jagged, wicked edge that cut her down to ribbons. The shroud he'd left in place.

Because she hadn't told him about her territory—that much she couldn't deny—but she'd guarded the truth because she thought she'd have to teach him about an entire world beyond this one. She'd assumed he was a mere human, free of manifested territories and occult nightmares. She'd needed to be sure he'd _believe_ her or else telling him would have gotten her nowhere better than an insane asylum.

But he had known about her territory. He'd known what she was.

And still he hadn't told her about himself.

"I—" Asato's hands fell away, and he stuffed them into his pockets. Fresh tangles of yellow and green dyed his Loom in telltale confusion. "I don't follow. Yusuke told Kurama about you? Why would he even think to do that?" Then he shook his head. "Never mind. Not important. I… Hell, I can't believe this is happening."

"Me neither," she whispered.

Risking a glance toward the shrine, she found it awash in colors. There were the blues expected of a reunion—teal happiness, cobalt amusement, aquamarine contentment—and an undercurrent of lavender affection flowing beneath, but there were darker emotions, too. Emotions that didn't belong. Like mustard anxiety and goldenrod discomfort. Moss green anticipation and mint suspicion. Emerald curiosity and coral concern.

A sigh rattled past her lips, visible in the frosty twilight.

How many people had noticed her panicked flight? And how many had become aware of it since? _He'd_ seen her, certainly. And she doubted Hiei had missed it. He was too observant, too attuned to people's worst moments. But what of the others? Had Genkai made the connection? Had Yana and Kaito watched her bolt?

What a scene she'd made.

And there was no possible reality in which she could face its fallout now.

"I'm going to go."

Asato went rigid. His eyebrows shot toward his hairline. "Don't be absurd, Weaver."

"I'm not." She reached for the railing, suddenly unsteady on her feet, the whirlwind of the last minutes catching up to her again, that freefall yawning open below her once more. A hollowness had consumed her chest, carving out a gaping abyss inside her ribcage, and it was drawing her in—drawing her under. "I can't go in there. I can't do this."

"Weaver—"

"I need to leave. This party was a bad idea before, and it's unfathomable now." A sob closed her throat, and she had to suck down a gulp of pure ice before she could find more words. "Shade, if I walk through those doors, I'm going to fall apart. I can't do that. Don't make me do that."

Magenta disappointment rippled across his Loom, and she winced, jamming her eyes shut, but as always, the darkness did nothing to block out her territory's sixth sense. His threads still danced across the dark canvas of her eyelids, a tangled tapestry woven from deep pink.

Nevertheless, she held firm.

She cracked her eyes open. Looked at him dead on. "I'm sorry, Shade."

He shook his head. "No. I get it. Shit, Weaver, of course I get it." He hugged her again, lanky arms encircling her back. Half under his breath, lime revealing his utter disbelief, he muttered, "Hell, I can't believe he hasn't followed us out here. What the fuck?"

The thought brought tears to Michi's eyes.

Thank goodness, he hadn't. Thank goodness, he'd left her alone. She'd never hold it together if he was standing there in the snow, his muted threads indecipherable, his secrets wearing her down to the quick.

"I just want to go. I don't need to see him." She choked off another sob, refusing to let it escape. "I don't want to."

"Right. Duh." His arms tightened a moment, then released her as he stepped back. "Look, we'll go in, skip the living room entirely, grab our stuff, and head out. Quick and painless—"

"No, Asato," she said firmly, latching onto this one decision that didn't make her heart ache. "You stay. I know how much you were looking forward to tonight. I'll walk to the train. I'll just need my boots and coat. That's all."

He didn't respond right away, frowning at her in stunned quiet. Then finally, he said, "Tell me you're kidding. I mean, seriously, Weaver. You think I'm going to let you _walk_ to the train station? In a fucking snowstorm?"

She didn't have a fight in her. Not anymore. Not over this. But there was no way she could let Asato leave with her. "Then I'll drive there. Or you'll drive me there. Whatever. As long as I get to the station and you come back here, I don't care."

For a second, it looked like he might argue further, stubborn navy worming through his Loom, but in the end, he only sighed. "Okay. Fair enough. We'll get our stuff and I'll drive you—"

"I can't."

"Can't what?"

"Go in there. Walk right by him. By all of them."

His laugh was like a bark, startled and unsure, stumbling forth as if he simply had no clue how else to respond. One of his hands swept toward their feet. "Weaver, we aren't going anywhere like this. No shoes? No jackets? We'll be popsicles before we reach the stairs, let alone the car. Heck, I think I may be one already."

"You go in," she said. "I'll wait here."

"Weaver—"

"Please, Asato."

The hard slant of his brow softened. Coral bloomed so strongly across his Loom it hurt her eyes. "Sure, Michi," he said with a sigh. "If that's what you want. I'll be quick."

Then he was gone, the door rattling open and shut on its track, leaving her with nothing but trampled snow and more swirling flakes. The cold had numbed her feet completely by then, and wet moisture stretched all the way to her knees, melted snow climbing ever higher up her tights. Yet none of that, not even the claws of a fresh buffet of wind across her cheeks, could distract from her fall finally ending—and the landing, she discovered, was far more painful than she could bear.

* * *

Every breath Michi drew in scorched down her throat, the cold rooting into her sinuses and chest and lungs, and she clung to that discomfort with all she had, letting it consume her, begging it to burn away the press of threads at her back. A migraine was unfurling its first poisonous claws within her temples, and she was so set on combatting it that when the door eased open once more, she didn't realize the Loom that joined her wasn't Asato's.

Her fault for being so careless.

"Ready, Shade?"

"Michi."

Her name. Softly spoken. Both syllables formed with perfect care.

An instant strike straight to her heart.

At once, any semblance of calm she'd regained fled, pushed further and further from reach with her every ragged heartbeat. She clutched at the railing, snow crushed beneath her skin, twining cold tendrils into her knuckles.

She said nothing.

He'd left the door open, and light spilled from within, illuminating the darkness gathering beyond the veranda. It turned the snow golden and bright, beautiful in an almost unearthly way. It could have been romantic.

Instead it burned her sensitive eyes. The headache threatening in her temples gained new ground.

"Michi," he said again. "Come inside. I…" He exhaled with meticulous patience, sounding world-weary in a way she'd never heard him before. "I suppose we owe one another explanations."

"I'm good. Thanks."

"Please." A word he'd used with her before. Then, on that night he'd eased her through a migraine, it had been so tender and kind it had nearly brought her to tears. None of that sweetness lived in it now. There was a tension thrumming in his voice, a calculated caution, that unnerved what little poise she had left. "You'll freeze out here."

Perhaps she would.

And perhaps that wouldn't be so bad.

"I said, I'm good."

Again, he loosed a slow breath. Then the door clattered shut, and the golden light cut out, plunging them back into twilit shadow. His footsteps crunched through the snow. As he reached her side, he shrugged free of his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. The fabric closed around her, its fleecy inner-lining soft as downy feathers against her chilled arms.

And despite herself, despite _everything_ , manners kicked in and she whispered, "Thanks."

"I understand how this must look," he said after a beat of quiet, and though she didn't so much as glance at him, she could feel his gaze on her, could sense his body heat so close at her side. Once that proximity would have set her heart racing. Now it simply filled her with dread. "I'm as surprised—"

"Don't lie to me."

He startled into silence.

Her voice had harbored no malice. Nor did her tone goad him for a fight. It had been a simple statement. Matter of fact. Clean cut.

And its blunt edge had set him on the wrong foot.

He cleared his throat. Tried again. "I'm not lying. I never expected to see you here. I had no idea—"

"I know that's not true."

His jaw clicked shut. He shifted, body straightening. Scarlet hair flashed in her peripheral vision as he cocked his head, angling it a degree to the side—observing her as if she'd just transformed before his very eyes. Noticing her in a way he never had before.

"Maybe you didn't predict I'd be here tonight," she added, "but don't claim you didn't know what I am. Don't claim you've been blindsided. Only one of us was in the dark, and it wasn't you."

"You know this how?"

It wasn't the response she'd expected.

She'd anticipated more denials. More efforts to deceive her. More attempts to play the unsuspecting victim.

Instead, a gravity hung in his question, sharpening its edges. The degree of calculation cushioned within his familiar, dulcet tone had been bared deliberately, intended, she had to imagine, to even the playing field between them, to unsettle her as she had just unsettled him.

If nothing else, it seemed he knew better than to hedge any longer—at least until he'd determined precisely what she already understood.

"Because I saw it," she said. "Your reaction to seeing me. You weren't surprised. Don't pretend you were."

"How can you be so certain?"

She almost laughed. "You mean you didn't dig the details of my territory out of Genkai once Yusuke spilled a secret that wasn't his to share? Somehow, I don't believe that."

He went impossibly still. When he spoke, for a moment—for one measly moment—she heard the man she'd thought she knew. "Michi, I pried no farther into your life than that which Yusuke told me. I swear—"

More lying.

"And yet Hiei knew," she said. "About us. Which means you must have brought me up."

A bolt of crimson frustration lanced across the corner of her vision. It stabbed deep into her temple, her last tenuous defenses crumbling before a full-blown headache. That he was annoyed, that he dared feel even a degree of frustration with _her_ , woke anger within the hollow confines of her chest, and she twisted to face him for the first time, ready to lay into him, words building on her tongue—

But one look at him froze her more thoroughly than the snowstorm ever could. Her anger sparked and died.

Fear mounted in its place.

He was watching her, emerald eyes glittering in the half-dark, gears turning behind those impossible irises. Studying. Stalking. Hunting.

This man before her was not the Shuichi she knew. Any last doubt of that evaporated. No, this was a stranger. This was the infamous Kurama of whom Ryota had spoken—and he was a fox, cunning and wily and impossible to out-maneuver. Before him, she was a mere mouse, a vulnerable creature caught in the rushes, quivering and defenseless as the fox slunk closer. Prey to his predator. A plaything caught between white-furred paws.

"I'll admit, I'm not sure how you're aware of it," he said with a calm that made her skin crawl, "but yes, I spoke with Hiei about you. Not to pry—or dig, as you put it—but to determine if he'd sensed your territory since I myself had not."

She tore her gaze from his, frowning into the darkened yard. Her fingers had gone frigid on the porch banister, and she loosened them painfully, aware of his eyes on her as she folded her hands within the lining of his coat. "What does that mean? Sense my territory." Yusuke had mentioned it, too. How it had struck him as odd that he couldn't feel her power.

A breath puffed from Kurama's nose in a white cloud. "You truly have no awareness?"

"That's not an answer to my question."

From the corner of her eye, she saw his lips press thin, color leeching from them, but it lasted only a moment before his unruffled mask resurfaced. "Most beings with spiritual affinity possess something of a sixth sense that allows them to feel similar powers in others. In my past experience with territories, such as those of Kido or Kaito—" he gestured inside, presumably to where the boys still waited "—whenever they manifested their territories, my senses picked up on that activation. However, with you… No such awareness has ever made itself known."

"And Yusuke didn't feel it either."

He hesitated, seemingly surprised, but then nodded. "Correct. And nor, for that matter, had Hiei. But that's all I ever asked of either of them." His hand rose to her elbow, curling gently. "I pried no farther, Michi. I'd thought, once the time was right, we would both come clean, and I'd planned to respect your privacy until such a moment arrived."

And it nearly had.

Wednesday. Four days from now. She'd planned to tell him all of it.

Goodness, she almost had already. That night he'd stayed at her apartment. That night she'd meant to protect _him_ from Dai and he'd meant to protect _her_. Not naively like she'd assumed, but because he'd seen exactly the same thing she had in those news reports. The rampage of some otherworldly being.

Except unlike her, that night hadn't made him want to tell her the truth. It would've been the perfect time. And yet still he'd hidden it.

He'd kept her in the dark.

He'd held onto that cursed shroud.

With unmistakable intention, she pulled away from his touch. His hand hovered a moment longer, pale in the wan light, the cause of the callouses on his lithe fingers suddenly clear to her in a way it had never had been before. Then his palm flexed inward and dropped back to his side.

"You should've told me," she said. "As soon as you knew what I was, you should have told me the truth. I deserved to know."

"And yet you didn't tell me yourself. You swore Yusuke to keep it from me." His tongued flitted out to wet his lips. His eyes narrowed. "I'm sorry, but I fail to see how your secret keeping differs from my own. Don't you recognize that double standard?"

This time she did laugh, a sharp bark of disbelief tearing forth unbidden. "You're smarter than that, Shu— Kurama. There's no way you don't see the difference. Once you knew we were both part of this—" her hands burst from inside his coat, flinging wide "—the greatest obstacle was gone for you. But until tonight, I thought it remained standing. I feared you'd think I was crazy. Some manic freak of a girl talking about seeing emotions as colored threads." Her voice broke, and she dragged down a gulp of air, managing only a sentence more before her lungs failed her entirely. "I've never told _anyone_."

"Michi…" Again, his hand extended.

She ducked away from it, numb feet stumbling through the snow. "Don't. Please, don't."

A streak of black unfurled across his Loom, dark as the evening sky, inky as the rage haunting Taki. And just like that, her final damn broke. It struck her, right down to her heart, that it was so impossibly, astonishingly unfair that _he_ was mad at _her_. That somehow, despite the miserable last hour of this night, she'd ended up the bad guy.

Tears came against her will. Gathering in her lashes. Blurring her vision. Tumbling down her cheeks in wet tracks that turned to frost in seconds.

"You don't get to be mad," she choked out. "Not at me. I'm not the one who…" A sob cut her off, ugly and wretched.

He winced. Pale pink regret overrode the black in his Loom. Beneath it, she spotted what might have been some version of magenta disappointment. In her? In himself? She had no idea.

Silence gripped them for a perilous stretch. Then his throat bobbed, and his gaze dipped downward, locking on her bare feet. "I'm not sure I yet understand your territory. Perhaps now isn't the best time, but if you could bear to explain…" He wavered, as if debating the merit of ignoring her request for space and stepping close, but in the end, he held still. "I don't want to upset you further than I already have."

She pressed her knuckles to her lips, trying to dampen her sobs. Tonight wasn't supposed to go like this. She hadn't wanted to see him—hadn't wanted to fall apart in front of him. This meltdown had been meant for the train, in some deserted compartment, with her knees drawn to her chest, crying where no one could hear her.

And now he wanted explanations. So he could not hurt her anymore.

As if he hadn't already rent her in two.

"Michi—"

"I see the Loom of Life," she said, rushing to get the words out before she lost her will entirely. "Connections between souls. The emotions people feel. My territory forces me to see it all as colorful threads."

A pause.

She didn't dare look at him. She couldn't bear to see what he might be thinking. Whether he felt betrayed by her. Whether he realized that while he claimed to have respected her privacy, she'd never respected his—that she _couldn't_ respect his.

"And that's how you knew I wasn't surprised to see you here."

It was more statement than question, but she nodded nonetheless. "You were… startled. But not shocked. You hadn't expected me here, but it wasn't the impossibility for you that it was for me. I never—" She cut herself off. Admitting how thoroughly ignorant she'd willed herself to be hurt too deeply.

He swallowed roughly and eased a step closer. Whatever had kept him motionless before no longer held sway. "And your territory, these colors, that's what causes your headaches."

Quick and cunning as a fox.

Clearly he missed nothing.

Oh, but how little credit she'd given him up to now. Far, far more than she gave to most people, and yet still far, far too little.

"Yes."

A rough gust of wind swept over them then, bringing with it a shower of snow. Flakes caught in his hair, catching moonlight before melting away to nothing. The sweater he'd exposed after removing his jacket had dampened at the shoulders, and she couldn't deny the red rising in his cheeks.

She could only imagine how she must look, her curls gone flat with melted snow, her mascara mangled by her tears, her tights a sodden mess. Yet Asato remained missing. Wrapping her arms about her middle, she said, "I'm going to leave. Asato was supposed to be getting my shoes and his keys and then take me to the train. I'm sorry for… this. For ruining this party for all of you. I—"

"Don't go."

Calm. Steady.

But belied by the faint coral concern in his Loom. And the pale mauve sadness. A dozen shades of pink tangled across his threads, jabbing at her throbbing temples.

"I don't want to be here."

"Because of me?"

A sigh snagged in her teeth. "Yes?" Half-question, half-statement. "Because of all of it. You. The Looms in there." She jerked a hand toward the snarl of threads waiting beyond the doors. So many colors. An utter cacophony waiting to drown her. "Because I didn't want to come here to begin with."

"It's not safe to travel now," he said gently, as if coaxing a skittish animal out of hiding, nearly managing to hide his wince at her desire to escape him. "These are practically blizzard conditions."

"I'll be fine."

He frowned and carried on, tone still painfully soft. "And what of when you reach Mushiyori? It'll be nearly midnight. Will you take the subway home alone? The train station lets out in a rough part of the city—"

"I think I can manage. I survived twenty years without someone walking me to my door."

His eyes fluttered shut at the edge in her voice, throat working as if to contain a quick rebuttal.

Good. Let him struggle a bit.

Besides, she wouldn't be going home alone. Hell, she wouldn't be going to her apartment at all. As soon as she boarded a train, she'd text Runa and Yurie and Nanako, and once she put a distress signal up, they'd jump into action. There wasn't a doubt in her mind that they'd pick her up at the station. Then Yurie would cry at her side and Nanako would remind her that strangers on a train were not to be trusted and Runa would declare Subway Guy the world's most heinous jerk—and for just a tiny moment, this night wouldn't be quite so atrocious.

Except Kurama wasn't done resisting.

"Michi, don't be rash. Stay here. Try to enjoy the party." A strained smile curved his lips. It didn't reach his eyes. "I promise you, I'll keep my distance if that's what you want. You need not speak to me again. But stay. Please."

It was hard to say who was speaking to her. Shuichi or Kurama. That 'please' was Shuichi's. The same one he'd used in her apartment. Kind. Warm. Imploring. But his eyes were like nothing she'd ever seen. Hard as the stone whose color they mimicked. Wholly without softness. Honing in on her with an intensity that could only be Kurama's.

And she realized, then, how little she must truly know him.

Because he was not two people. Of that she was certain. The man she'd known and the man whose eyes she stared into now were not different people. They were not separate identities. They were simply disparate masks. Fraternal twins of each other. Different sides of the same coin.

He chose which façade she saw, which version of himself he presented. With perfect, exacting detail, he dictated the tenor of his voice, the curl of his lips, the light in his eyes.

But he could not dictate his threads.

And despite those gemstone eyes, she couldn't deny the colors flickering through his muted Loom. Washed out as always, but decipherable nonetheless. After all, there was little confusion amongst pinks. Sadness. Regret. Concern.

Nor could she miss the palest of purples underlying the rest. Affection. For her.

Still.

At her hesitation, he seemed to realize he'd won. His chest rose and fell in a near silent exhale, his relief evident in the tension slipping from his jaw. "You'll come inside?"

Wordlessly, she bobbed her chin.

"Thank you."

Then he stepped toward the door, his shoes flattening the snow. On the threshold, he paused. He did not turn when he spoke. Instead, he kept his back to her, his shoulders rigid, his head tipped forward, hair obscuring his features. "You should know, Michi, that it wasn't you at whom I was angry."

The rest he left unsaid, yet as the door whispered open and light spilled across the porch, she heard his meaning clearly enough. It echoed in her ears as he stepped into the hall, the raucous chatter of Genkai's guests disturbing the night, and it stayed with her as she followed him in, skirting the party and heading for her room. She'd stay, just as she promised him, but she needed a chance to gather herself. To fix her makeup. To strip off her soaked tights.

Yet as she slipped into her bedroom's darkened interior, she still saw him, standing there in the doorway, framed in golden lamplight, his unsaid words hanging between them.

 _It wasn't you at whom I was angry. It was_ me.

* * *

AN: Don't hate me, friends! I'm afraid their relationship couldn't be all happiness and sunshine and rainbows forever. Where would be the fun in that...? But don't worry, more to come next week! Now Michi has a whole party to survive!

For anyone worried, never fear, this story has miles and miles yet to go. We're nowhere close to diving into the conclusion. Don't fret on that end!

The response to last chapter was thrilling beyond all measure. A MILLION, GAJILLION thanks to you wonderful souls: Antiqua-hime17, momentowhatever, La Femme Absurde, TECHNICALpanda, Deanna Prince, knightsqueen05, o-dragon, ballet022, Star Charter, xXGemini14Xx, Fish, Dear author, WistfulSin, Roxun, ahyeon, and ChocolateKisses9.


	16. Black Out

Even within the darkened bedroom, Michi's territory still rioted, dozens of Looms blazing against her second sight like strobing beacons. All the partygoers in the distant living room, Taki two doors down—together, they were too much to bear, too much crushing in on her when she'd already all but collapsed into the chasm in her chest. Breathless, she grabbed for the stack of wards Genkai had left her with frantic desperation.

Plastering the parchment slips across the walls was the work of minutes. In theory, only four should have been needed. One per wall. But Genkai had provided more than that—of course, she had; Genkai had always recognized the intensity of Michi's territory—and Michi took full advantage.

Three on the door. Two stuck to the window, one above, one below. Four for each of the walls, plus an additional fifth on the wall closest to Taki.

Even then, as she stood empty-handed in the room's center, her wet tights sodden between her toes, she remained cognizant of unnatural colors, the party still bleeding along the far edges of her senses, but the improvement was immense, and for the first time in hours, her lungs almost seemed capable of proper breathing. Yet with that faint reprieve came more tears, silent sobs shaking through her chest. What a mess. What an utter and complete mess. And now, by some impossible means, she had to put herself together and go back out there to face all those near strangers.

Kurama was expecting it. And she couldn't let him—or any of his friends—see how deeply he'd torn her apart. Not more than she already had.

So she didn't try to stifle her crying, not yet, but she did force herself into motion. Shoving up the hem of her dress, she hooked her thumbs through the waistband of her tights and dragged them downward. They parted from her water-logged skin with a squelching unpleasantness, leaving her completely barefoot, the floor damp beneath her toes.

When she'd packed that morning, she hadn't accounted for spending a half hour standing in a snowstorm, and no change of formal wear awaited in her bag. There were no tights to replace those she'd ruined, nor a new dress to don in the stead of her clammy one, and the outfit she'd packed for tomorrow—dark jeans and a comfortable blouse—while not particularly casual, certainly wasn't fit for a party.

All of which was inconvenient, but not truly problematic. Her tights had been decorative, not purposeful, and her dress would dry quickly enough. Besides, the dark fabric barely showed the moisture sticking to her shoulders.

The real problem lay in her hair.

The curls she'd deftly crafted had come loose, the life further sucked from their spirals with every new snowflake that melted amongst the twists, and she hadn't brought her curling wand, so emergency repairs were out of the question. Sighing, her tears giving way to sniffles, she dug through her bag until she unearthed a claw clip, then stepped up to the mirror.

A dozen finicky attempts later, she'd swept back the ruined top layer of her hair, convincing it to tumble between her shoulder blades in a manner almost reminiscent of an actual style. The curls beneath remained somewhat intact—enough to pass cursory muster, if nothing else—and that would have to do.

But then there was her makeup.

And the fact that she remained the world's ugliest crier.

Sifting through her bag again, she dragged free her toiletry case and tugged out a makeup wipe. Her runny mascara came off in black streaks, her smudged eyeliner going with it.

In their wake, her cheeks were left puffy, her eyes red-rimmed. If she were Yurie, fixing this mess would be a cinch, but she most definitely wasn't Yurie, and nor was Yurie anywhere to be found. Worrying her lip, she grabbed her phone and swiped open a chat with all the girls.

She might not see them tonight, but that didn't mean they weren't a quick text away.

 _-In case I ever get it in my head that crying does me any favors, remind me that a single tear is enough to make my face swell up like I lost a fight with a truck.-_ Shaking her head at her own ridiculousness, she fumbled for her eyeliner, but responses came in seconds, and no sooner had she uncapped the pencil than did her phone start chiming in rapid succession.

First came Nanako, a slew of emojis proceeding her actual words, hearts in a rainbow of color interspersed between sobbing faces. _-Oh no! Meech, just tell me who to curse and I'm on it!-_

Then Yurie. _-I always knew Asato would throw a junk party, but making you cry? My standards were officially too high.-_

That sparked a flurry of back-and-forth as Nanako contested the details, reminding Yurie that Asato hadn't organized tonight's get-together, just invited Michi along. To which Yurie responded with dramatic all-caps declaring the mess Asato's fault regardless because— _clearly_ —he had cruddy friends.

By the time Runa's message arrived, Michi was laughing, unable to hold back giggles as Yurie and Nanako devolved into an emoji battle. Between glances at her screen, she'd managed to reapply her eyeliner and mascara, hiding the worst of her swollen redness beneath a liberal application of an impossibly effective concealer Yurie had gifted her on her last birthday, and as she stepped over her discarded tights and braced to brave the Looms beyond her door, she almost felt ready.

Then Runa's text flashed across the screen, Michi's phone chirping a final time before she switched it to silent. _-Got it, Kuroki. Will definitely keep your ego in check. Though let's be real, it's not a truck that kicked your ass. It's a full-blown train. Or maybe a plane. Or a cruise liner? Yeah, definitely a big old cruise ship. No doubt.-_

A response so perfectly Runa that a new ache opened in Michi's chest—one that reminded her in no uncertain terms how desperately she adored her friends.

A heartbeat later, before she could even darken the screen, two more texts came through, rapid-fire agreement from Yurie and Nanako pinging into existence.

 _-Absolutely.-_

 _-Preach it!-_

Biting her lip against a smile, Michi keyed out an answer. Clear. To the point. And truer now than ever.

 _-I love you girls. Endlessly. Now I'm going back in. Wish me luck.-_

* * *

She found Asato in the kitchen, bottle opener in hand as he pried the cap off a fresh beer. He'd been talking, focus directed toward a tall brunette woman standing before the open fridge, but as Michi stepped inside and rocked a hip against the doorjamb, she drew his eye and he fell quiet.

"You," Michi declared, "need lessons in proper evacuation techniques, most of which don't include disappearing into the ether, much less siccing the man meant to be avoided upon your unsuspecting partner."

Asato scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck. "Well, hey there to you, too, Weaver," he said, the forced casualness in his tone cracking beneath the weight of her glower. "Kurama said you'd be sticking around—"

She silenced him with an arched brow. "Seriously, Shade, are you kidding me? What were you thinking?"

At her back, through the narrow hallway, the party bustled. Conversations carried into one another, voices rising steadily, matching the flow of alcohol stride for stride. In turn, the tangled mess of two dozen Looms clamored against her territory. Booze tended to have that effect on people. It loosened emotions, eating away at the finesse of more delicate feelings and casting Looms into turmoil, colors shifting quicker and quicker. The more intoxicated a person became, the more their threads began to—for lack of a better word—unravel, like a string twisted against the grain, space forming between the individual filaments, colors growing hazy, blurring like someone had distorted their aspect ratio.

It was enough to make her head spin.

But all that ruckus was also enough to make the kitchen feel almost private, the brunette woman notwithstanding.

In the wake of Michi's questions, Asato merely gawped at her, fidgeting uselessly with his beer bottle. Rolling her eyes, she closed the scant steps between them, tugged the drink from his fingers, and tipped it to her lips.

"Not cool, Weaver—"

"You're lucky I'm settling for stealing your beer."

Chuckling lowly, the brunette ducked into the fridge, but Michi ignored her as she jabbed a finger into Asato's chest. Just once. One hard jut to stab her point home.

Wincing, he rubbed the spot. "On a scale of I'll-never-go-anywhere-with-Shade-again to Shade-is-going-to-fall-asleep-tonight-and-never-wake-back-up, how mad are you?"

"Let's put it this way. Even as we speak, I suspect Yurie is in the midst of crafting an Asato doll that she plans to turn into a veritable pincushion. But," Michi added as he winced, one eye twitching closed in imagined pain, "in the grand scheme of things, considering Yurie is about as spiritually inclined as a chopstick, you've fared all right."

This time, a snort of laughter escaped the woman at the fridge. She straightened, two beers dangling between her fingers, and closed the door with a knock of her hip. "You know, Kido, I think I like your cousin."

The wry smile the woman cast Michi's way echoed in the cobalt of her threads, but Michi didn't miss the point hidden in her sardonic commentary, even if Asato did.

Time for introductions.

Dipping into a light bow, she said, "Apologies, I haven't caught your name. I'm Michi Kuroki."

"Oh, I know who you are, kid." The brunette crossed the room and shoved a beer into Asato's grip, then eyed Michi over. "It wasn't that hard to piece together once you bolted into a snowstorm at the sight of Kurama, and Yusuke was more than happy to crow out any details I missed."

Well then.

To be expected, probably. But unsettling regardless.

"Lovely," Michi said with false cheer.

Another snorting laugh. The woman raised her beer in a one-sided toast. "I'm Shizuru Kuwabara. Kazuma's older sister. He dragged me into this ragtag family when he got tangled up in Yusuke's cases for Spirit World."

Kazuma. Kuwabara.

Not two people. Just one.

Yukina's sweetheart, Kazuma. But also Shuichi's roommate, Kuwabara. Or, as she realized now, Kurama's old teammate, Kazuma Kuwabara. Multiple names, but only one person. Yet again.

Shizuru broke for the living room, but she glanced over her shoulder as she went, beer rising again. Around its narrow mouth, she said, "Anyway, kid, don't judge Kido too hard. Kurama has a way of getting in a person's head and twisting them all up inside. Probably thought you were doing what Michi would've wanted, didn't you, Kido?"

With that, she ducked around a hulking demon, the same burly man with a dyed mohawk who'd yelled out to Yusuke earlier. Alone with Asato once again, Michi sucked down another drag of beer. Her nose crinkled in disgust. "I still hate this junk. How can anyone enjoy drinking these?"

"And yet here you are stealing mine. Which probably says all that needs saying, huh?"

"Just about."

He popped the cap off his new bottle, avoiding her eyes as he said, "Look, Weaver, Kurama cornered me as soon as I came inside. He wanted a moment with you, and I thought maybe you could talk through whatever the hell this is. Obviously I was wrong about that, but…"

"But you're an idiot."

One wiry shoulder rolled into a shrug. "More or less."

* * *

Asato took on the role of her guide, pulling her through the gathered crowd, tossing out quick introductions any time they passed an unfamiliar face—though only Michi seemed to need them. Like Shizuru, the rest of the milling psychics and demons had worked out her identity, or damn near close enough. Certainly, they'd realized she was associated with Kurama in some capacity. That much they made clear with their darting, awkward glances from her to him and back again.

For his part, Kurama kept his distance. Much as he'd promised he would.

But she felt his gaze on her, tracking her constantly, and at every opportunity, she angled herself away from him, positioning him at her back, putting bodies in the path between them. Forcing him out of sight, if not so out of mind. Nevertheless, all her efforts proved in vain, and she felt his attention like a brand across her shoulders.

More than once, she debated the merit of trying to locate his Loom. Usually, she fought not to notice a person's threads, but the hurt, wounded part of herself still hunkering in her hollow chest insisted no harm lay in trampling his privacy. Not anymore. And if she could read his threads, maybe she could get some sense of what he was thinking.

In the end, she didn't bother attempting. Finding his pale Loom amongst the crush of everyone else would prove nearly impossible.

It wasn't worth worsening her headache.

Instead, she concentrated on her current company. Asato and Yana and Kaito. _Her_ boys. The one handhold she possessed in the midst of this calamity.

"How's your head?" Yana asked before swilling down a mouthful of beer.

They'd taken up residence in the room's far corner, not far from a table of finger foods Yukina had set out. Yana oscillated between leaning against the wall at her side and hovering over the table, loading a miniature plate with round after round of appetizers. His most recent haul had made its last hurrah, and she could tell he was plotting his next excursion to the food, his threads mossy green with anticipation.

She ran a finger around the mouth of her empty bottle, aware that both Asato and Kaito had glanced her way, awaiting her answer as surely as Yana himself. "Any of you ever been hit with a sledgehammer?"

A glimmer of cobalt amusement flared in Kaito's Loom, though his eyes remained flat behind his glasses. "Can't say I have."

"Urameshi punched me out cold once," Yana said. "Probably the closest I've ever come."

That sounded like the first lines of a story. If Michi asked about its origin, no doubt Yana would be more than happy to supply a retelling. Too bad she wanted to know even less of the Detectives' misadventures now than ever before.

As for Asato, he answered with only a roll of his eyes.

Cutting him her sharpest look, she tapped her temple and said, "Well, I imagine _this_ feels a lot like a sledgehammer straight to the skull. Except I'd wager this is worse. Like… ten times worse. At minimum."

Yana winced and hoisted his beer. "Time for another round, then? Maybe we can numb you up a bit."

Huffing a dry laugh, Kaito shook his head. "I suspect you'll discover it doesn't work that way."

"Worth a shot, though. Right, Weaver?" Asato shoved away from the wall, stuck his thumbs into his pockets and started for the kitchen, Yana right on his heels.

And just like that, Michi was alone with Kaito. Which was about as cruddy company as she could manage, short of one of the ex-Detectives themselves.

She peeked at him sidelong, trying to discern what was happening behind those thick lenses of his. Surely, he had an opinion on tonight. After all, she'd dreaded him discovering Shuichi and turning all the more stilted around her as a result. Yet now, he looked almost… bored. His threads loosely yellow. The barest cobalt at the edges. Not at all the emotions she'd expected.

It was as if her relationship with Kurama was to be expected, as if it were the most obvious turn of events in history. As if there were no universe in which her dating Kurama was not a guaranteed occurrence. As if this terrible disaster of a night was so droll and predictable that he couldn't even muster a trace of surprise or indignation or jealousy.

Quite without warning, he laughed, a genuine chuckle flooding the space between them. "You know, I used to believe he was just Shuichi, too."

Her breath caught in her throat. "Come again?"

"Kurama… or Shuichi, as we both knew him first. We were high school classmates. Rivals of a sort, though perhaps only on my end." He tapped his foot, a jittery sort of energy taking him over, leeching into his Loom in streaks of goldenrod. "Imagine my surprise when I learned my seemingly innocuous classmate who constantly bested my academic efforts was in fact a demon soul tucked within a human body, using it like some vessel."

What?

A demon soul.

In a human body?

Goodness, what in all three worlds had she gotten herself in to?

For a moment, the world teetered, threatening to give out beneath her for the hundredth time in the last hour, but she swallowed down that frightened panic, stoutly refusing to wilt before it yet again, and clung desperately to rationale thought. Maybe she'd misunderstood. Or maybe Kaito had the pieces wrong. Or maybe—

A bolt of lime through Kaito's threads put ice in her veins. "Oh," he said. "He hadn't told you all of that just yet, had he?" His laugh crackled like dry leaves, jagged and brittle. "Always with the secrets, he is."

"Kaito," she interrupted before he could upend her tenuous composure any further, "remember the sledgehammer analogy from all of five minutes ago? You think maybe it was a sign I'm not up for this?"

The barest furrow darkened his brow, his eyes narrowing, whatever facet of mirth had risen in them dying off. "Have it your way, Kuroki. My mistake for thinking we'd discovered some common ground at long last." Then he straightened, buried his hands in his pockets, and strolled away.

Leaving her alone.

Entirely.

Which was most definitely _not_ what she'd wanted.

Without even Kaito to distract her, the weight of Kurama's gaze became too much to bear. Frustrated, Michi dug her nails into her palms and swung her head his way, ready to call him out—

Only to find his attention wasn't on her.

He was engaged in conversation with a cheery, blue-haired woman whose threads glowed with iridescent teal, as thrillingly doused in happiness as any Loom Michi had ever witnessed. Compared to her, Kurama appeared sedate, sneaking only brief responses into the gaps between the woman's excitable chatter, and as Michi had expected, his Loom was nowhere to be found, too thoroughly overridden by the knotted tapestries of threads amassed within the room.

To her dismay, this revelation that he was not in fact as preoccupied with her as she was with him had opened the ache in her chest wider, as if someone had taken a chisel to the abyss's edges and knocked them into the void.

And truly, it was _impossible_ to keep him from her thoughts.

Over and over, she relived the moment when she'd first seen him tonight, stepping through the archway, unwinding his scarf from his neck. Then his gaze swinging up, finding her. That single thread of surprise unfurling.

Even now, she could hardly look away from him, from his scarlet hair, somehow unaffected by the snowstorm they'd withstood, or his cream sweater, sleeves bunched up past his exquisite forearms, or his viridian eyes, lit with laughter even at this distance.

A demon soul, Kaito had said.

What did that even mean? And where did it leave her?

Where did it leave them?

Even if she could figure out how to forgive his deception, even if he could look past the violation presented by her territory, she wasn't sure how they could ever pick back up where they'd been. Because her mind hadn't changed. She still wanted nothing to do with the occult Asato loved so dearly. This party, these people—they weren't part of her plan, part of her future.

That decision included the ex-Spirit Detectives. It included Kurama.

And by extension, sure as anything, that meant it now included Shuichi Minamino, too.

Movement at her side announced Yana's return, and she accepted the beer he offered gratefully, sucking down an over-large mouthful as he launched into a story she barely heard and nearly retching that gulp back as up as the carbonated fizz rolled down her throat. Goodness, she hated beer.

* * *

The night slid into a blur, a kaleidoscope of colors swirling through the temple, the world awash in blues and greens. As the evening bled toward midnight, the Looms around her grew ever more distorted, and after that second beer Yana brought her, she drank no more, certain adding a buzz to her roaring headache was a sure path to hell.

Asato and Yana seemed to have arrived at the poorly hidden decision to remain her ever-present companions, at least one of them always hovering at her elbow, and as foolish as it might have been, she was thankful. Amongst a sea of unfamiliar faces—or worse, faces that were all _too_ familiar—Asato and Yana were a small comfort, a safe haven.

Furthermore, they didn't expect much of her. Unlike the others here, they understood that every moment in this room was a test of her will, a war against her territory waged not with swords and fists but with blinks and breaths, each one she managed amounting to a major victory.

That understanding meant that when Asato left her in Yana's shadow, summoned off to a round of shots by a bellowing Yusuke, the big psychic knew his role. Her buffer. Her guardian. The one who'd pick up the slack in a conversation when she simply couldn't.

And as people began to approach their sheltered corner, he performed valiantly.

Keiko was the first, stopping by to ask how Michi had been, her smile gentle, her eyes hosting a softness that made Michi's stomach twist into knots—as if Keiko knew intimately just how world-shattering tonight's events had been. Not long after, the blue-haired woman Michi had seen with Kurama swooped in, introducing herself as Botan, her threads assaulting Michi in a wall of vibrant teal happiness and sparkling emerald curiosity. From there, as if Keiko and Botan had opened the floodgates, more people drifted over—Kazuma Kuwabara, sketching a sloppy bow and asking to be called by his surname; the boisterous demon Chu, his Loom an unraveled disaster thanks to the handle of liquor he clutched close; Touya, a reserved demon who informed her he worked alongside Hiei on the border patrol; and on and on, an endless stream of names and riotous color.

Through it all, Yana kept close, stepping in to keep dialogue flowing whenever words began to fail her.

She'd owe him forever.

Nonetheless, when Yukina caught Michi's eye from across the room and gestured her over, Michi couldn't resist the excuse to escape that constant influx of introductions and meaningless chitchat. Thanking Yana with a wordless squeeze of his elbow, she headed for Yukina and the hall beyond, staking out a path that kept well clear of Kurama as she went.

A congestion of onlookers had gathered around the couch, watching Yusuke and Kuwabara knock back shots, but despite the reason he'd drifted off earlier, Asato was strangely absent from their ranks. Frowning, Michi glanced back, searching for him elsewhere and turning up nothing but a glimpse of Kurama mired in a hushed discussion with Hiei.

Then she'd reached Yukina, and the opportunity for further investigation evaporated. "Hey," she said, nearly drowned out by a roar that went up from the drinking crew. "Can I help with something?"

"A bit," the apparition said, threads glimmering with coral. Smiling softly and studying Michi through the fall of her bangs, Yukina wrapped a hand around Michi's arm and towed her across the hall to the kitchen. Only once safely inside did she add, "It seemed like you could use a breather."

Ah.

Yukina to the rescue.

"Ever the observant one, aren't you?"

"I was here the weekend you discovered how strongly inebriation impacts a person's Loom." Yukina's smile dimmed a degree. "That headache… I've never felt so helpless. I hope to never see you like that again."

Of course. Because Yukina was a healer used to soothing people in pain. Only, much like conventional medicine failed to dim Michi's migraines, Yukina's powers proved ineffectual once Michi's territory got its tenterhooks inside her skull. Genkai had explained why at some point. Something about her headaches being psychic in origin, not physiological, and thus beyond the realm of Yukina's skills. In truth, Michi hadn't listened to the particulars.

Like so much else, she hadn't wanted to learn—hadn't wanted to understand.

In light of the coral concern staining Yukina's Loom, it was impossible to deny how wretchedly selfish such thinking had been.

"Thanks," she said, wishing, not for the first time—not by a long shot—that she'd heeded Asato's ramblings even once. Fidgeting, she worried a string come loose from her dress, twisting it in on itself, and an instant later, Yukina was at her side, scissors in hand, snipping the thread free.

Well, so much for distraction.

Yukina stepped back, footsteps whispering against the floorboards. "How are you faring?"

"Headache wise? No better or worse than I'd anticipated. The rest of it? Not great."

There was no need to get more specific.

Mauve sadness rippled across Yukina's threads, smooth as fine-spun silk. True to form, the apparition hadn't partaken in any drinks, and while the brightness of her threads certainly lacked the muted gentleness of Shu— Kurama's, there was something to be said for threads still so composed. A small respite, yet thoroughly appreciated.

"I'm sorry, Michi. I can only imagine—"

"Weaver!"

The shout came at her back, out of sight down the hall. Three short steps backward had Michi peeking through the doorway and spotting Asato sprinting her way. "Shade?"

His yell attracted attention, the drinking game that had kept everyone occupied going quiet, and she could've sworn she saw a flash of scarlet in the corner of her eye, Kurama's head swinging her way, but then Asato had seized her wrist and yanked her forward and she lost sight of the living room entirely. "Come on. Quickly."

"What's going on—"

"Taki's out of his room," he said around a ragged pant, and she stumbled, her bare toes catching on nothing. Behind them, footsteps announced followers, but if Asato noticed, they didn't deter him. "Genkai nabbed me ten minutes ago. She wanted to spare you if she could, but… Well, you'll see."

Her pulse skittering in her veins, Michi shook her head. "Sorry to tell you this, but I don't think I have the bandwidth for Taki's Loom at the moment."

"Well, it's either we talk him off a cliff or they—" he flapped a hand over his shoulder "—wrangle him into submission. Your call, Weaver."

Against her better judgement, she glanced back as Asato guided her around a corner, tugging her toward Taki's supposedly empty room, and there they all were. The ex-Spirit Detectives. Arrayed in a solid foursome, strolling in their wake, their Looms an inseparable tangle of navy determination and mint suspicion, the Ties That Bind gleaming in pearly strands between them. Right before she snapped her focus forward, Yusuke raised a hand in a lazy salute, a sly grin stealing across his lips.

Well.

She swallowed down a ragged breath. "I thought he wasn't in his room."

"Nope. He's in yours."

"What?"

"Looking for you, Genkai figured." Asato halted at last, dropping her wrist, and she realized they'd reached the bedroom in question. Inside was deserted, her discarded tights still pooled on the floor, Kurama's coat tossed across the bed, two dozen wards plastered over the walls, but no Taki or Genkai anywhere to be found. "What the hell?"

In a blur of black cloth, Hiei blazed past them. Cursing, Kuwabara trucked on his heels, yelling hoarsely, "Hey, short stack, wait up!" At the end of the hall, the demon yanked open a sliding door to the outside. A gust of freezing wind billowed down the corridor, snowflakes spiraling inward. A breath later, both Hiei and Kuwabara plunged into the swirling snow, and she lost sight of them in the dark.

"I'm telling you," Yusuke said, his hand clapping down on her shoulder, sending adrenaline ricocheting through her veins, "sensing energy is a skill you should get cracking on developing." He swung his cocky grin Asato's way. "Thought you already had, Kido. Anyway, your demon is out there." Then, jerking a thumb toward the snowy dark, he sauntered past them, loping after his friends.

And that left three.

Michi sensed _him_ , an arm's breadth away. Probably studying the confines of her room. Noting the wards. Contrasting them to the one he'd seen in her apartment—except, no, he likely didn't need a comparison. Even back then, he'd surely known precisely what she'd forgotten to hide.

Another perfect chance to tell her the truth.

Another opportunity he'd shunned.

And faced with that thought, the prospect of chasing the other men into the snow suddenly wasn't as daunting as it had been a heartbeat earlier. After all, she'd already spent a half hour weathering the blizzard. Compared to remaining here, was more exposure really so bad?

No.

It wasn't.

Gaze locked resolutely on Yusuke's retreating back, she broke for the door. Asato gave chase, and the rustle of further clothing confirmed Kurama trailed her as well, but as they reached the veranda, Asato sped up, beating her out into the storm, and before she could follow, a new hand had closed around her wrist.

A gentle grip. Long, calloused fingers. Threads woven atop knuckles in shades of pale coral.

"Michi."

"Release me."

He sighed. "Let us handle this."

So calm. So placid.

So utterly opposite the terror racing in her chest, thudding through her heart in rolling waves and erratic beats.

But standing there, one foot on the porch, the temple's golden light at her back, she could finally make out the scene in the yard. Asato, four steps ahead, frozen in indecision. Yusuke and Kuwabara ten feet farther on, standing in the snow, Yusuke's fist glowing blue, an ethereal sword crackling in Kuwabara's clutches. Hiei in the lead, his wicked blade drawn, snow melting around his black boots, steam rising into the night.

And ahead of all them, Genkai. In snow up to her knees. Gray hair thrashing in the wind. Gaze honed straight forward, targeted on the hulking figure half-obscured behind billowing flakes.

Taki.

Stoneskin activated. Rougher than she'd ever seen it. Spikes jutting from his shoulders and elbow and hips. A rock monster crossed with some spiny creature straight from nightmares. His threads were a ghoulish nest of black rage and seething white, scratching and clawing against her territory with vicious intensity.

But still Taki.

Always Taki.

"Michi," Kurama said again, a note of gentle reprimand ringing in the syllables of her name, as if her were speaking to a misbehaving child. His grip tensed, light pressure turning her toward him. "Stay inside. We'll manage this."

Gritting her teeth, the aching wrongness of Taki's presence digging at her senses, she looked Kurama straight in the eye and asked, "How? By fighting him? By beating him witless?" A jerk of her wrist freed her of his hold, and whether he'd let her go by choice or been too startled to resist, she couldn't be bothered to work out—though the dim green lancing through his Loom might have been lime if she'd squinted hard enough. "That's how your team solved all its old cases, right? With your fists?"

She didn't wait for a response, only whirled and bolted into the night, racing across the porch, plunging down the steps into the snow, and shouldering a path between Yusuke and Kuwabara. Jostling the fire demon's sword arm as she passed, she snapped, "Put that stupid thing away, Hiei."

And then she was even with Genkai, the old psychic's attention snapping to her only a moment before returning to their rogue charge. "Careful, girl." Then softer, for only Michi's ears: "I'll keep the boys at bay. You get him through this."

Michi dipped her chin in silent answer.

The snow had accumulated past her shins, the wind blasting the powder into the air in swirling gusts at uneven intervals, and in only seconds, her skin had gone numb, her bare legs breaking out in chills, her dress growing damp, but none of that mattered. Not in light of Taki, hunched in the drifting snow, body shaking—rage and fear and confusion tearing him apart, ripping his Loom into pieces.

Hands up, palms exposed, the very picture of surrender, she called, "Taki?"

The demon remained statuesque. Head down. Shoulders bowed. His only movement came from his chest, his every breath heaving through his ribs. All the while, his threads thrashed. White clashed over black, brittle filaments snarled so tight she almost feared them might begin to snap, splintering one by one by one.

Somewhere at her back, she heard movement. The clink of a sword being sheathed. The clatter of footsteps down stairs. Genkai's low growl. Then only quiet.

Still, Taki said nothing.

Despite herself, despite her faith in him, for one trembling moment, Michi feared he was lost. Gone up in smoke just like Junko. But beneath his writhing threads, his core still waited. White in parts, yet still largely the core she knew, woven of kind teal and reliable aquamarine.

Still Taki. Always Taki.

She eased a step closer. Tried again. "Taki? It's me. It's Michi."

Another heartbeat of stillness crept past before his head swung up, his joints whining, skin creaking like grating rocks. His slate gray eyes didn't focus, not right away, but they found her slowly, pupils dilating. His brow creased. Lime and goldenrod bolted across his Loom in streaks of confusion before settling into mired, regretful mauve and the faintest tinge of aqua.

As if he was relieved. As if he drew comfort in her presence.

His lips parted. His breath stuttered.

Then he spoke: "Miss Kuroki?"

And she allowed herself to hope.

* * *

AN: It's the night that never ends! Next chapter will at last wrap up the party, but not before some hard decisions are made. It feels so dang good to have all the disparate pieces of this story operating in the same space now. Hope it's enjoyable!

(And because I'm not 100% decided on the answer myself: do you think Kurama _was_ or _was not_ looking at Michi during the party? Is he good enough to avert his gaze in time? Or is he avoiding her as promised?)

Thank you, thank you, thank you to last week's brilliant, wonderful, fantabulous reviewers. All these peeps ROCK: Antiqua-hime17, knightsqueen05, momentowhatever, E.V. Delacy, ChocolateKisses9, Dagdoth Fliesh, Fish, ahyeon, Guest, Deanna Price, LadyEllesmere, and Star Charter!


	17. The Gathering Gray

Standing before Taki, hands out, utterly and completely vulnerable, Michi grew cognizant of his size in a way she never had before. A gentle giant, she'd always thought. But now he didn't look so gentle, not with his skin erupting into stony spikes, his Loom flooded with a black rage that was almost invisible against the forest's dark shadows. And yet this was the mess she'd gotten herself into, because her choices were clear: manage to coax Taki down or watch the Detectives' fists beat him into surrender.

Really, those weren't options.

She had only one path forward.

"I heard you were looking for me," she said, striving for lightness, as if she'd dropped by his apartment for a visit rather than traipsing barefoot into a snowstorm to hunt him down.

Her efforts, weak as they were, went unnoticed. He seemed not to hear her at all. Body creaking, he shifted his weight onto his heels. "You came back."

 _For him_ echoed at the end of sentence, left unsaid, yet easy enough to glean from the startled wonder in his voice. It wasn't true, of course. She hadn't come to see him. And suddenly, much as she had in the kitchen with Yukina minutes before, she was overcome with the depth of her own selfishness, her own thoughtlessness.

She knew what shape he was in. She'd witnessed it firsthand repeatedly now. More than that, she could see him in a way no one else could. There wasn't another soul in Genkai's armada who could read the Loom of Life as she could. Yet she'd abandoned him, fleeing rather than face the gaping fear his white Loom awoke in her.

Selfish.

So childishly selfish.

Still, no matter how much he might want to hear it, she couldn't bring herself to lie to him. Instead, she hedged. "Yes, Taki. I'm here."

"And you'll help me."

She wavered. The certainty in his rough voice coupled with the flare of navy determination in his threads struck her as misplaced. How could he be so confident in her?

"Last time," he said, lumbering a step closer, "you made it better. You made me better." One massive hand reached out, granite fingers closing around her extended palm, swallowing her wrist beneath his grasp. His tone turned pleaded. "Fix me again, Miss Kuroki."

"I—"

As quick as she started, she cut herself off. She'd nearly denied him, nearly admitted that whatever had helped him after her last visit hadn't been her, at least in no greater capacity than giving him an ear to vent to. No matter how aware of his warped threads she might be, she couldn't alter them any more than Asato or Genkai could.

Only the truth wasn't what he required right now. What he was in need of was someone to be strong in his stead, someone to help claw back that all-encompassing white.

A shame, then, that she had no idea how to help him do so.

But maybe _he_ did.

"You felt better after my visit in November?" she asked, tilting her head to the side, pushing a gentle smile to her lips. If she could prod him into explaining, distract him with questions, maybe she could stabilize him emotions. Perhaps even talk him out of his stoneskin or get him back inside.

"It stopped," he said. "For a little while, it all went away. The anger." His lips curled back in a snarl, the gloom casting frightening shadows across his craggy features. Rage—remembered or present or both—roiled across his threads, lashing strings of darkness whipping across the underlying white. "And the rest of it, too. But it came back. So quick." He gripped her hand tighter, her knuckles grinding together painfully as his fingers tensed. "Do it again. Make it go away again."

All his words rushed together, quick and choppy, like a toddler's half-formed thoughts flooded with stumbling, heady impatience, jumbling into the night in puffs of cold, misty air.

Wiggling her toes in the slushy snow, she fought to keep pain from her answer. "Your grip's too tight, Taki."

At once, he released her, his arm dropping to his side, pink regret popping like fireworks across his Loom only to be swallowed up in white moments later. "Sorry, Miss Kuroki. So sorry—"

"Hey," she whispered, splaying her aching fingers atop his own, "it's okay. Not your fault." Resisting the urge to look back at Genkai for guidance, she drew a gulp of icy wind into her lungs and soldiered on. "Taki, could you release your skin? It's… unnerving."

His forehead furrowed, but the spikes protruding from his joints retracted and slowly his skin reverted to normal, real flesh appearing beneath her fingertips, warm for mere moments before the cold leeched into him.

She squeezed his hand. "Thank you."

Behind her, someone muttered something out of earshot. Yusuke? Maybe Hiei? Perhaps she'd surprised them with her small success, startled them with evidence that she had any clue what she was doing, but she knew better. This wasn't true victory. Persuading Taki out of his stoneskin was no more than a first step in calming him enough to consider him stable. Last time, it had taken her hours in his room listening to his rants, and he hadn't been nearly so undone then.

Wind sent a flurry of snow gusting skyward, billowing inside her dress and igniting a bout of shivers down her spine. Flakes landed on her eyelashes faster they could melt, but while her true vision blurred behind delicate, fractal shapes, the sight granted by her territory remained clear as flawless crystal. Taki was wreathed in so much white, so many pale threads scything across his Loom, and each one struck like a fine-pointed dagger, a thousand needles pricking at her temples, clamoring and shouting and _begging_.

But for what, she couldn't work out.

Hunching against the wind, Michi freed his hand and wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing her palms across her freezing biceps. It was nothing short of deranged to be out in this storm. "Taki, why did you come out here? If we go back inside, we can talk. Just like last time. For as long as you need."

He tossed his head in adamant refusal. "It's too…" Crimson frustration darted into his threads as he searched for phrasing, but once he found the right construction, more words tumbled forth and darkness consumed the red like night stealing across the horizon. "Loud. It's so _loud_ in there, Miss Kuroki. All those people. I _hate_ them. I hate this place. I hate—"

"No, you don't," she interrupted, gentle and even and highly aware of the line she was about to toe.

Pushing back on Junko's rage had been all it took to send the demon over the edge. One moment the apparition had been the hammer of a gun, cocked and ready to fall, and in the next, a spark ignited her gunpowder and she'd struck like a snake, that paring knife driving straight for Michi's throat. Only quick action by Asato and the boys had saved her.

This time, there were no boys. At least, not hers.

Yana and Kaito were inside, far from reach, and Asato stood amongst her array of spectators, on hand, but not in any position to act. If Taki snapped, Asato would never reach the demon's shadow in time to halt him. The porch was too far away. And even if Asato were closer, the shrine's lights cast Taki's shadow backward, stretched into the forest like a grotesque, gargantuan gargoyle, awkwardly impossible to trap.

But it didn't matter. She knew where the line lay in the snow, and she trampled over it without hesitation.

"What you're feeling isn't you, Taki." Shoving a lock of wet hair behind her hair, she leveled him with her steadiest gaze, silently pleading with him to keep control, to listen and understand and hold it together. "You remember my territory? It's been a long time, but I explained it to you—"

"I remember."

"Good. Okay." Her fingers caught in her dress, twisting the damp fabric into knots. "Then you know I can see your Loom, and what I'm looking at… None of these emotions belong to you, Taki. We both know that. And I can only imagine how terrifying it must be, all these inexplicable feelings drowning out the real you, but that doesn't make them legitimate."

He blinked. Uncertainty flitted past the black and white in streams of goldenrod. Then he shook his head, his shoulders rolling inward, the first fissures of stoneskin mottling his exposed forearms. "No. You're wrong. I hate—"

"Taki."

He went still. His stoneskin slowed its advance.

Prickling at the back of her neck reminded her of the Detectives, all watching her, listening raptly, no doubt cataloguing away every bit of information she was about to give up. What judgement were they making of her?

How acutely did they realize she was out of her depth?

"This hasn't happened only to you," she confessed, treading onto dangerous ground. Would knowing this was bigger than just him overwhelm Taki further? Or would it prove a comfort, some signal that he wasn't as broken as he feared? "Remember Dai? Yana and I introduced you both last spring. He lives— lived in Sarayashiki." At the demon's jerky nod, she continued, choosing her narrative carefully, "A few weeks ago, we had to bring him in. He's been… struggling. Like you." Technically, she had no proof of that. She'd never seen Dai before Spirit World swept him away for trial and punishment—likely for death—but even still, it wasn't farfetched to imagine his Loom as bleached and brittle as Taki's own. In fact, she'd stake her life on it. "After that, Asato thought we should start checking in on transplants, and a lot of them are feeling how you are, Taki. Angry. Isolated. Unable to explain why they suddenly despise Human World."

The longer she spoke, the more the black in his threads faded. A swirling mix of colors swept in on its wake. Forest green fear. Mauve sadness. Pink regret. Rust red resentment. Surprising traces of silver embarrassment.

As if he were ashamed of what he'd become. As if he dreaded it represented some mark upon his character.

She carried on before it could undo him entirely, stepping closer, pins and needles bursting across her numb feet with every movement. "There's something off in your threads, Taki, but that doesn't make this your fault. Whatever is happening—to _all_ our transplants—isn't something you should blame yourself for. But it is something you need to fight. You need to remember _you_ , the Taki I know is still in there."

A sigh shuddered through his barrel-chested frame. "You make it sound so easy, but it isn't, Miss Kuroki. I'm angry all the time. Every moment. Awake. Asleep. It doesn't matter." His teeth gnashed together, and a growl like rumbling thunder issued from his throat.

White crackled through his Loom.

Before her eyes, she saw it surge inward, vast swathes of his core bleaching of color in a matter of heartbeats. Worse still, where the white of his Loom collided with his core, his threads began to tighten, twisting into impossibly tight coils. Not all of them. Not even most of them. But a handful, their brittle filaments winding and winding and winding—and then fraying, strand after strand snapping cleanly in two, a sharp flurry of movement unlike anything she'd ever seen in a Loom taking hold.

As the gossamer strings broke, the threads they composed began to fade, winking out of sight. If she hadn't been so solely focused on him, she wouldn't have noticed, but as it was, with his Loom flooding her entire field of view, there was no missing the thinning of his threads, a dozen strings flickering into oblivion.

Nothing in him changed.

But it was impossible to misconstrue what she witnessed.

Only when the roiling white calmed did the fraying stop, and by then a crushing pain had erupted behind her eyes, a migraine like no other sinking poisoned hooks through her nerves.

As tears beaded in her eyelashes, Taki sagged into the snow, collapsing to his knees, submission evident in every defeated line of his body, and before Michi could say anything further, Genkai stomped into her peripheral vision. "Up, Taki," the psychic commanded, tone stern yet rippling with Genkai's unique brand of stony compassion. Casting Michi an approving dip of her chin, she snagged a wrinkled hand around Taki and leveraged him upright. Together, they made an absurd pair as they struck out for the shrine, the demon's huge body dwarfing Genkai's tiny figure.

Legs trembling, the Loom of Life's every glimmer searing into her soul, Michi clamped her palms over her eyes and heaved down the frigid air in short, jagged breaths. Reality was twisting out from beneath her, the trampled snow giving way, readying to tip her into—

An arm looped around her shoulders, steadying her. "Nice work, Weaver."

Wordlessly, she shook her head.

Asato tucked a knuckle beneath her chin and tipped her head back, but she refused to move her hands. She couldn't bear to look at him—or at anything, for that matter. Even though her palms did nothing to blot out the blues playing across Asato's Loom, they felt like a last defense, some meager means of controlling at least a piece of what she saw.

If she couldn't cut off her connection to the Loom of Life, at least she could silence the rest of the world.

But Asato didn't understand. He must've thought she was simply upset, staving off tears like those that had consumed her last time she'd spoken at length with Taki. He didn't know it was so much more than that.

So much _worse_ than that.

"Hey," he said, "you talked him down. With a crap ton more finesse than I anticipated, by the way. Don't you think a moment's victory is in order?"

Crunching footsteps heralded more bodies growing closer. Pearlescent threads burned across the black canvas of her eyelids, the Ties That Bind twining between the approaching men in scorching nets.

"Well," Yusuke said, voice braying like a wolf's howl against her over-stimulated senses, "that wasn't the fight I was hankering for, but it was… something, I guess."

Kuwabara, recognizable by the unfamiliar gruffness of his tone, groaned and snapped, "Oh, shut up, Urameshi."

"Like hell I will."

Yusuke's bluster did nothing to deter Kuwabara. "We don't have to solve everything with a beat down. Michi just faced a raging demon like it was nothing. Can't you respect that?"

A raging demon?

That's how they saw Taki. Not as her friend. Not as a confused transplant. But as an enemy to be beaten into submission like so much nothing? Even the admiration present in Kuwabara's voice wasn't enough to distract her from that truth.

Michi lost track of their line of conversation, tuning them out as Hiei interjected an acerbic barb, concentrating on quelling her territory's raging enough to summon words. To that end, she managed her first solid breath since Genkai guided Taki inside and forced her palms from her eyes. Asato's pinched features swam into view. His head was angled away, but she still saw the frustration in the narrow-eyed glower he tossed in the direction of Yusuke's continued chatter.

On her right, half-obscured by a tandem of the drifting snow and her wavering vision, scarlet hair blurred closer. Stoutly ignoring his former teammates' squabbling, Kurama said, "Perhaps we should move this inside?"

His voice worked its usual wicked magic on her nerves, and she remembered with painful clarity the wonders his Loom could bestow upon her territory, the sheer degree of relief his muted threads had always invoked.

But she stamped down on the urge to peek his way, stubbornly shutting down her desire to step into his arms and pretend their dynamic hadn't been irrevocably altered since the last time she'd seen him, back when he'd still been no one more or less than Shuichi. Goodness, how could it already feel as though their relationship had occurred lifetimes ago? Or perhaps in another lifetime entirely? One in which she was the Michi Kuroki she used to be, that teenage girl who'd gone to sleep and never woken back up, and he was Shuichi Minamino, magnetic and inconceivable, not this man he truly was.

She knew better though, and looking at Kurama now, for even so much as a second, seemed a feat that would surely unravel her completely. She couldn't risk what she might find in his viridian eyes, never mind his enigmatic Loom.

Instead, she caught Asato's sleeve between trembling fingers. To his infinite credit, he looked back at her instantly.

"Weaver?"

"Taki's threads—"

Yusuke swaggered a step closer, shoving his face into the space above Asato's shoulder. "You keep saying that. Threads? What the hell are those?"

She ignored him, her grip on Asato's shirt tightening. "Not even just his threads," she said as if Yusuke had never interrupted, "but his entire Loom is… I don't even know what. Fraying? Breaking?"

Forest green burst into her cousin's threads, and she whimpered, shielding her eyes with her free hand in some vain attempt to hide from his fear. He winced, recognizing the cause of her pain immediately. "Sorry, Weaver."

"We need to go in," Kurama said again, more firmly this time, any hint of gentle question long gone. "Michi—" He cut himself off. Over the howling wind, she almost thought she heard him sigh. "We're all unequipped for this storm, except perhaps Hiei. Whatever conversation this is, whatever Michi needs to tell you, Kido, should occur somewhere we aren't all risking exposure and frostbite."

She couldn't resist glancing at him any longer, and she discovered him studying her, concern drifting through his Loom in shades of palest pink. If not for the edge hardening his eyes, he could've been Shuichi.

But that hardness was undeniable.

He appraised her like he was truly _seeing_ her for the first time. It was a look not unlike that Yusuke had given her in Taki's apartment weeks prior, when he'd gawked at her like she'd just molted an exoskeleton he hadn't realized she possessed. On Kurama, it wasn't nearly so ungraceful—so startled. Instead, the hard glint in his emerald eyes hinted at predatory intent.

In reappraising her, he'd found prey less easily wrangled than a field mouse. While she may not prove proper competition for a fox, she wouldn't be so effortlessly subdued either.

What he made of that realization was impossible to say.

Shivering, abruptly aware of the cold with an acuteness that set her jaw chattering, Michi started for the shrine. Obeying Kurama, though not for his reasons. The sooner she was inside, the sooner she might escape them all.

And that time couldn't come quickly enough.

As they mounted the stairs, Asato cleared his throat roughly. "Explain 'fraying.' What does that mean?"

"Precisely what it sounds like. His threads were unraveling, the tiny filaments that make them up snapping into pieces." The floorboards felt flaming hot against her frozen toes, and her feet left wet imprints as she trekked for her room. Her dress clung to her thighs, the fabric soaked clean through, and at her doorway, she stopped, utterly refusing to go any farther. For her, if no one else, the party was officially over. Rubbing her eyes, unable to even look at Asato straight on, she said, "I'd rather only tell it once."

He sighed. "The morning then? With Genkai?"

Her nod made the world spin.

"You have to be kidding." Yusuke propped his hands on his hips, glaring from Michi to Asato and back again. "You're not going to fill us in on whatever you're blabbing about?"

Without warning, Asato's patience broke. Crimson annoyance surged into his Loom. "Give it a rest, Urameshi. For once."

Startled, Yusuke rocked back onto his heels. Then he shoved his hands into his pockets, his shoulders rolling into an almost sheepish shrug. "Yeesh. Calm down, Kido." Tossing a final, puzzled frown Michi's way, he strolled down the hall, headed back toward whatever remained of the evening's festivities. Kuwabara and Hiei tailed him, the former murmuring an awkward 'good night,' the latter not so much as sparing her a moment's notice.

Which left Asato.

And Kurama.

"You going to be okay, Weaver?"

No.

Absolutely not.

This night had been torn straight from hell. Her every nightmare piled atop one another in a never-ending fever dream. Now she wanted nothing more than to crawl beneath her bed's covers and drift into oblivion. Anything to escape this torture. Anything for even a heartbeat's worth of respite.

She admitted none of that. "Yeah. Go back out there, Shade. Enjoy yourself."

The thin press of his lips and hazy goldenrod in his threads suggested he thought such a task impossible, but he put forth no resistance, instead yanking her into a hug. He lingered a moment longer, arms tight around her shoulders, before departing.

And then only Kurama remained.

"I'd like to talk," he murmured, drawing a step closer, eliminating what little separation the hallway had provided. "I want to understand, and I wish to provide you explanations in turn." His hand rose, long fingers reaching for her.

She stepped back, beyond his grasp. "I can't." It was the truth. Not some mere evasion. Her bandwidth had run out. She had nothing left to give. A conversation now would get them nowhere. "I'm sorry."

His arm dropped back to his side. He peered past her, soaking in the wards plastered across her walls, gaze then dropping to her, heavy with solemnity. "So be it. Tomorrow, then."

She nodded, though even she wasn't sure if the gesture held any meaning. "Tomorrow."

A ghost of his usual smile emerged, but it did nothing to warm the ice inundating her system.

Unable to look away, she groped for her door's handle. "Good night, Kurama."

As soon as the name left her lips, his smile melted away. A long breath rattled through his nose. Then he lowered his head politely. "Sleep well, Michi."

His head remained bowed as she slid the door closed.

How long she stood there, hand still pressed to the wood paneling, toes all but touching the threshold, she couldn't say, but she could've sworn he stayed on the opposite side long after she at last turned for bed. Listening to her movements. Waiting for the door to creak back open.

Hoping for her return.

Wishing she'd change her mind.

* * *

Michi never slept that night.

Despite Taki's disruption, the party carried on for hours longer, the thrum of distant conversations drifting through the shrine's thin walls, carrying laughter into her dark room on rolling waves. More than once, footsteps padded beyond her door. Checking in on her? Supervising Taki? Who knew. Certainly not her.

Once, the trespasser stopped in the hall, their feet blocking what little light leaked in through the crack beneath the door, and a telltale clink and rattle proceeded a set of car keys being slipped through the gap. Asato's hushed voice followed. "I'll take the train tomorrow night, Weaver. Car's yours if you want it."

Then he ambled off again.

Eventually, the gathering petered out. Hidden as she was behind her army of psychic wards, the Loom of Life had gone hazy, its brilliance somewhat dampened, but she still registered a dozen Looms peeling off into the forest. Probably demons off to Demon World, their travel unimpeded by the storm. Other Looms cluttered the hall as guests staying the night meandered to their bedrooms in slow trickles. If she'd tried, no doubt she could've identified Asato somewhere among them. Yana and Kaito, too.

Through it all, she lay in the darkness, the blankets tangled around her legs, the shadowed ceiling providing a blank canvas free of threads. By the time the last of the revelers had tucked in, dawn was breaking, pale light seeping through her window, and she knew sleep would never come.

But a decision had.

One she should've made a long time ago. One she'd tried to make at the beginning of the fall but had allowed Asato to talk her out of. One that would make no one happy—except herself.

And maybe, for once, that was all that mattered.

She allowed an hour more to pass before slipping out of bed. In the half-light, she dragged her jeans up to her hips, tugged on her blouse, and wrangled her disastrous hair into a messy bun. In the bathroom down the hall, standing before the mirror, frowning at her pale reflection and hollow eyes, fresh makeup proved a necessity, and while her resulting efforts would've never satisfied Yurie, they were at least enough to stop her from resembling the undead quite so impressively.

Back in her room, she gathered up her things, folded her still damp dress with painstaking precision, and slid it into her bag, following it with her tights and toiletries. Then she removed the wards from the walls and windows and door, breaking the protective seal that had sheltered her through the night. She left the lot on the bed, stacked atop the pillow just as she'd first found them.

Which left only Kurama's jacket to contend with.

It lay draped across the foot of the bed, one sleeve inverted from her scrambled attempts to strip it off the evening before. Heart in her throat, she sank down beside it and pulled it into her lap, running her fingers across its soft, fleecy lining. A minute passed. Then two. Then five. Until, at last, she stood, fixed the inside-out sleeve, slung the coat over her arm, and trod into the hall, stooping over just long enough to scoop Asato's car keys off the floor.

The shrine was nearly silent, the stillness disturbed only by snores rumbling in some remote room, and she cut a path through the quiet, honing in on the kitchen. With every step, her bag thumped against her thigh, a physical reminder that she was real. That this was happening. That it was time.

That her decision had been made.

As she'd expected, the kitchen wasn't empty. Genkai stood at the window, staring out over the empty veranda. A cup of tea perched on the windowsill before her, steam fogging against the glass panes, and the psychic's wrinkled hands were clasped behind her back, the fingers of one curled around the wrist of the other.

But what Michi hadn't accounted for was Genkai not being alone.

As she stepped over the threshold, emerald eyes tracked over her, evaluating her from head to toe. A faint smile, tentative and probing, cracked across familiar lips. "You're up early, Michi."

Before that soft grin, she wavered, but he'd calculated for that response—she was sure of it—and she refused to be so easily manipulated. Gritting her teeth, she let her bag slide to the floor, then stepped closer to the table and offered up the coat. "Sorry for bolting off with this, Kurama."

As it had the night before, his name—his _real_ name—gave him pause. Good. Let him try to influence her. Let him toy with fire.

She'd do the same right back.

Frowning, he accepted the jacket. His thumb traced idly across its sleeve. "No apology necessary." The levity injected in his tone didn't reach his eyes when he added, "I'd hazard to say you needed it more badly than I."

Without turning, Genkai huffed. "The two of you can play whatever game this is later. For now, Kuroki, explain what you saw in Taki's threads."

Abrupt and to the point. So very Genkai.

Kurama eased his chair back. "I'll give you space—"

"Sit down," Genkai barked. "You, too, Kuroki."

Eyes narrowing a degree, Kurama started again, "There's no need—"

"Save me the act, Kurama. You're curious. You won't con me into believe otherwise, and no doubt Michi can see it writ across your room like a damn neon sign. So sit and listen and put that pain-in-the-ass intellect of yours to use, because I've been stumped on this bullshit for months and I'm sick of working through it alone."

Genkai was right. Curiosity had glimmered to life amongst Kurama's threads, but it was hardly neon. A slip of the tongue on Genkai's part, a lazy figure of speech? Or had she not made the connection that Kurama was the same guy Michi had told her about back in November? The one who Genkai had insisted Michi should be studying. The one Asato had so boldly called her boyfriend.

If that label had ever been true, it certainly wasn't any longer, but that didn't change the oddity of Kurama's Loom.

Strange for Genkai not to have connected the dots.

All the psychic's bluster had little impact on Kurama, and he remained half-risen from his chair, his gaze swinging Michi's way. "Thoughts, Michi? If you'd like me to leave, I can do so. I don't want to—"

She didn't want to hear how he planned to finish that sentiment. Push her? Impose? Pry? Any possible response seemed too caring, too like Shuichi, and she needed to keep him at a distance—she needed to think of him as Kurama.

The decision she'd arrived at in the wee hours of dawn depended on it.

"I don't care. Stay. Leave. Whatever you'd like."

Lips pressing thin, Kurama resumed his chair. His expression was indecipherable. "Very well. Genkai's not wrong about my curiosity. It's been… piqued."

Snorting in sardonic amusement, cobalt streaking her threads in blue, Genkai snatched up her tea and at last turned to face them. One look at Michi sent her wiry brows arching. "You look like death, girl."

Michi hauled out a chair at the table and sagged into it. "I didn't sleep well."

"The wards didn't help?"

Her right shoulder rose in a half-hearted shrug. "They did as much as could be hoped. My territory was—for once—not the cause of my restlessness. At least, not entirely."

"Then what was?"

"Perhaps the better question is, what wasn't?" A roundabout way of saying she didn't much want to discuss it further.

Whip-smart as she was, Genkai understood. Cupping her tea between both palms, she breathed its steam into her lungs and took a leisurely sip before saying, "Then let's return to last night. What did you see in Taki's Loom? And what changed between when we checked on him in the afternoon and his escape attempt all of five hours later?"

Michi explained in stilted descriptions, struggling to find words to capture the brittle hardness that had overtaken Taki's Loom, the way his threads had gone stiff and dry as hay. Describing his Loom out in the snowstorm proved even more difficult.

"When I got there, his threads were almost without color other than white and black. As I got him talking, different shades came back. Fear. Bitterness. Regret." She frowned at her knuckles, unable to look either of them in the eye. "At the end, right before you stepped in, the white… surged? Not just the way color normally shifts through a Loom. This was actual movement, those white threads jutting inward, piercing the weave of his core—and wherever those connections happened, his threads frayed."

Genkai had gone unnaturally still. "For context, how do Looms usually move?"

"They don't." Michi curled her hands into fists atop the table, digging her nails deep into her palms. "Threads are mostly stationary. Sometimes, I think of them in terms of movement because the change of color through a Loom can create a sensation of fluidity, as if the threads themselves are rippling or flowing, but that's just an illusion. They don't move in any proper sense. At least, not on a timescale I can observe." At last, she looked up, finding Genkai and imploring the woman to understand. "But Taki's threads were... shifting. Changing color, yes, but genuinely moving as well. Twisting up on themselves, raveling tighter and tighter—and then snapping clean in two."

"At which point, what? What else happened?"

"The broken threads disappeared. Faded right out of existence."

Genkai drained the last of her tea and set the cup on the table with a clatter. "You didn't break down as you did the last time you maintained sustained contact with Taki's white threads." An observation, but a question, too.

"Not for lack of… wrongness." Michi shrugged yet again. "I think I was simply all out of breakdowns by that point."

At that, Kurama stiffened. A muted clearing of his throat gave away his discomfort, and from the corner of her eye, she noted a flush of yellow bloom across his Loom.

He'd drawn Genkai's attention, too, and she turned her hawk-like gaze his way. "What do you make of all this, Kurama?"

"I'm afraid I don't know enough to say." Though he'd addressed Genkai, his focus remained on Michi. He offered a beleaguered smile. "I've heard of the Loom of Life, but only ever in passing, and many years ago, at that."

A frustrated breath hissed from Genkai's nose. "Then I'll have to give you the materials I've gathered over the years of assisting Kuroki. Perhaps you'll find something in them that I've missed. I'll fill in whatever gaps in your knowledge remain."

Michi didn't miss her absence from Genkai's plans.

Which meant Genkai hadn't missed the intent of Michi's own.

Sure enough, when Genkai next spoke, she'd leveled Michi with a critical glare, disappointment etched into the creases of her cheeks and spilling across her threads in magenta streams. "Intent on leaving us so early, girl? Had you hoped to slip out unnoticed?"

There was no point in denials. No sense in dodging the truth.

"I wouldn't have left without filling you in, but yes, I'm going."

"And I imagine you don't aim to return."

"No. I tried to make this decision months ago, and I let myself get pulled back in. But I'm done. I _need_ to be done."

The psychic scoffed, then turned her heel and stalked for the door. "You're running scared, Kuroki. Like a chickenshit coward. Can't say I'm surprised. I won't pretend to know all your demons, but I don't think you'll stay gone, so I'm not going to bother with goodbyes." She disappeared without a word further, and then Michi was alone with Kurama, sitting at the table, looking at one another over Genkai's empty cup of tea.

He exhaled slowly, head tilted, red hair tumbling over his shoulder. "I gather you don't plan to stay long enough for a proper discussion."

"I need to go," she whispered. "Somewhere far from here. Somewhere separate from… all of this."

"And being done—is that a declaration that includes me?"

The bleak sobreity in his tone knocked her breath from her lungs. Unbidden, tears rose in her eyes, and stubbornly, she blinked them away. By all rights, she owed him more than this. If he'd still been Shuichi, she would've given him a million explanations, but Shuichi as she knew him may never have existed at all, and staring at Kurama, all she could manage was a whisper soft: "I'm sorry."

He shook his head. "Please stop apologizing, Michi. If I'd wanted to avoid this outcome, I should've have approached it all differently. The day Yusuke told me about you, I should've come to you for the truth and let you make this decision then."

For a moment longer, he remained still. Unreadable. Emerald eyes glazed with a complexity she couldn't begin to make sense of. His Loom was a tangled mess of hues, sadness and regret and affection—even now—playing across his cheeks in pale pinks and lilacs.

Then he pushed back his chair and stood. "I'll walk you to the steps."

Part of her wanted to refuse, desired this parting to end now, insisted that remaining with him for even a second more would break her into pieces too shattered to ever be put back together, but a far greater part of her couldn't let this moment go. If it was the last time she was to see him, she couldn't bear to cut it short.

And so, she accepted the hand he extended, and when his palm enveloped hers, she allowed their fingers to thread together—this one, final time.

As they walked, he spoke again. "There's much I wish I could explain, Michi, but I won't force that on you."

She tried to answer, to say something—anything—back, but words wouldn't come.

At the front door, he released her hand, stepping back as she tugged on boots and shrugged into her jacket, then sliding the door open and following her onto the veranda. Outside, snow had blown up against the shrine in deep mounds, but her boots found solid purchase as she picked her way down the porch steps. Clad only in a thick sweater, Kurama slid his hands into his jean pockets and kept pace across the yard.

It was only as they halted at the summit of Genkai's endless stairs that he reached for her once more. One hand caught hers, gentle pressure guiding her toward him. He raised the other to her cheek, brushing a thumb across her skin like the caress of silky wings. His finger traced a path across her face, along her cheekbone, around the curve of her chin, under the swell of her bottom lip—and on and on.

Infinitely gentle.

Intimately tender.

As though he was committing every detail of her to memory. As though he were inking her into his soul.

Then the hand entwined through hers slid away, seeking new purchase. It smoothed over her hip, his thumb hooking through her belt loop and tugging her closer still, the pads of his fingers sliding beneath her coat and blouse, pressing faint callouses into her side.

"Michi?" A whisper and a question.

She didn't pull away, and he deduced her answer.

When he kissed her, the world disappeared. Gone was the drifting snow and the watery sunlight. Gone was the chilling wind and nipping cold. There was only him. Only his hand blazing against her hip. Only his fingers gliding around the back of her neck and sliding into the roots of her hair. Only his lips, soft and inquisitive at first, then bold and assertive. Only his threads. Lit with lavender and lilac and indigo. Painting her eyelids in shades of purple too beautiful to be real.

It was a kiss that said things he never would—a kiss that declared her choice to leave him unfair and objectionable, yet simultaneously promised he wouldn't push her, no matter how desperately he disagreed. It was a kiss that professed how he wanted her—and oh, how he _wanted_ her.

But more than any of that, it was a kiss that whispered of the fall she'd taken, the fall she'd mistakenly assumed she'd stumbled into alone, and as his arm slid around her waist, anchoring her against his impossibly firm chest, she realized she hadn't jumped solo. All along, he'd been there. Falling, too. Plummeting and plummeting and plummeting.

And now that fall was over.

Hours could have passed before he eased back, but once he did, she couldn't let go. Clutching at his sweater, she buried her face in the crook of his collarbone, her forehead pressing against the strong column of his neck, his jumping pulse skittering against her cheek. He loosed a sigh, his breath scorching over the shell of her ear, and still she clung to him, letting the feel of him etch itself into her bones.

So quietly she almost couldn't hear his voice, he murmured, "My explanations aren't going anywhere, if you choose to someday want them."

A dozen responses crowded onto her tongue, clamoring for release, but there was no coherence to their message, no agreement on whether she was taking the right path, and in the end, she said nothing as she stepped away, hoisted her bag more firmly onto her shoulder, and climbed down the steps.

Going home.

And never looking back.

* * *

AN: Thus ends the first arc (of three) of this story. Which is NOT to say that we're even remotely close to done. I'm not sure how long each arc will be, but we've got a ways to go yet. I'm so excited about what's in store from here on out—and I hope no one is too upset with Michi's decision here. She has her reasons (however valid or not valid they might be).

Also, guys, I think this is the longest chapter I've ever posted. Since drafting it back in June, I've toyed with the idea of splitting it up, but I rather love it all as is—not to mention, it was probably time for this party to finally end, haha. Not all chapters will be this long, but my average has risen over the last few weeks. Strange how that happens!

As always the biggest, most wonderful thanks to everyone who reviewed/subscribed/favorited last week. I was surprised in the most delightful of ways how many of you love Taki. It's always a delight when an OC connects with readers. Also, y'all are definitely in the same camp as me regarding Kurama's behavior last chapter! Extra special thanks to these folks especially: Star Charter, knightsqueen05, TECHNICALpanda, Aly Goode, Fish, La Femme Absurde, WistfulSin, o-dragon, Guest, and ahyeon.


	18. Fading Fuchsia

"Is this Michi's first Heartbreak Shake? That can't be possible, can it?"

Peering over the edge of the gargantuan milkshake set before her, Michi watched Nanako furrow her brow in startled disbelief, lime spilling across the willowy girl's threads in ever-darkening streaks of surprise. In tandem, similar shock rippled through Yurie and Runa's Looms, and Michi tried in vain not to let their disquiet worsen the ache rotting in her chest.

Not that she could fault them for their uncertainty. There was something bizarre and surreal about this moment, about sitting in this diner, participating in a tradition Runa had founded way back in high school after her first serious boyfriend dumped her out of the blue. On a dreary day in the winter of their second year, Runa had hauled them off campus the minute the final bell rang, heedless of the clubs they were meant to attend, and dragged them here, to the eatery that would soon become home to the worst moments of their lives.

But never in all the years since had Michi sat on this side of the worn-down booth. Never had she been the recipient of a shake the menu proudly proclaimed was meant for _two_.

Never had it been _her_ heartbreak that summoned one of these gatherings.

Usually, she sat on the booth's opposite bench, crammed shoulder to shoulder with two of the girls, a shake with three straws set before her. Usually, she was the consoling voice, the shoulder to cry on—the one who kept calm.

Not so this time around.

"I think it is," Yurie said. "Whoa."

"Whoa, indeed," Nanako all but whispered.

It wasn't because there hadn't been other guys. There'd been men in Michi's life before Shuichi. Guys she'd kissed. Even guys she'd slept with. But they'd come and gone, crossing over her path with little impact.

She had her territory to thank for that.

And now the loss of Shuichi lay at its feet, too. Sort of, anyway.

Stoppering the exposed end of her straw with one finger, Runa lifted it free of the milkshake she was set to share with Yurie and Nanako, then closed her lips around the other end and sucked down its contents. A dramatic first sip if ever there was one, and Michi recognized it for what it was easily enough—a stall tactic, something for Runa to do with her hands as she fumbled for words.

Michi sighed. The least she could do was spare them this awkwardness. "I'm fine. I swear. Heartbreak is probably too generous a moniker."

At that, Runa snorted, her straw popping free of her lips. "As if, Kuroki. Let's flash back to four nights ago, shall we? I seem to remember a text about crying so hard your face was on the losing end of an asteroid collision."

"I believe I blamed a truck."

The tale she'd spun them hadn't been the full truth of the wretched party, but rather a cobbled together sketch that pieced facts and half-thought out fiction into a semblance of believability. She'd framed Shuichi as an old friend of Asato's, a connection neither of them had been aware of until he arrived at the party, then fabricated a lie about the fight that brought about their end. Through it all, she kept the details agonizingly scarce, hating every false word with a bone-deep ache.

Ultimately, they'd bought it. For now, at least.

Yurie muffled a laugh behind one hand, but pushed Michi's shake closer to her with the other. "Denial. How commonplace. I thought you'd be a little more original, Meech. Now, get drinking."

Maybe if she _weren't_ in denial, Michi would've mustered a comeback, but as things stood, the lurching hurt in her gut left no room for witty repartees. Instead, she opted for her first spoonful of milkshake, swallowing down the concoction of chocolate ice cream, fudge swirl, and brownie bits with dogged determination. As per tradition, the girls had ordered her shake, and if nothing else, they'd nailed the recipe. Death by chocolate. Exactly as she'd have chosen herself. Which made the second bite easier than the first—and the third easier still.

The other girls broke into their dessert with verve, electing to utilize spoons or Runa's straw technique to combat the ice cream's density. Simple sipping wouldn't do. For a few beats, they let eating consume them, but with each spoonful Michi downed, a chill worked deeper into her system, rooting in her stomach and spreading outward in a widening net, until at last she had no choice but to set her spoon aside—just for a breather—and face the ugly truth.

"I think the worst part," she said softly, "is that I'm not even mad at him. Just… hurt. Disillusioned."

At once, she had their attention, their spoons and straws sputtering to a standstill. Probably, she should've carried on, explained in some way how it was Shuichi had hurt her. Except it wasn't Shuichi who'd devastated her. That honor belonged to Kurama, and his was a name they didn't know—a name they _couldn't_ know. Not without exposing all her other secrets. Her territory. The absurd truth of the three worlds. That she had dated a demon of all people.

For perhaps the first time ever, she was almost tempted to tell them. Sitting there, staring at their Looms all mottled together, a complex weave of coral concern, mauve sadness, and lavender affection shimmering across their cheeks, the place where one Loom ended and the next began almost impossible to pinpoint, it struck her as nearly feasible that this was her moment. This was her chance to lay it all out. Every lie. Every half-truth. Every deception. Strewn across the table for judgment however they saw fit.

She wanted to trust them. She _could_ trust them. Yet the confession wouldn't come. Maybe it never would or maybe that day just hadn't arrived yet. Either way, it wasn't upon them now. Not when her plans to tell Shuichi had gone so wretchedly awry.

After all, today was Wednesday. The day she'd intended to reveal her secrets to him. The day she would've taken the risk he'd deigned not to hazard.

How painfully ironic.

A drop of melted ice cream dripped from Yurie's straw and plopped to the table in a messy splatter, saving Michi any further wallowing. Lime streaked through the girls' web of pinks and purples as Yurie grabbed for a napkin with a muffled yelp and scrubbed the surface clean.

The commotion broke the stillness, and biting her lip, Runa dunked her straw back into the shared milkshake, then leveled Michi with her most wry smile. "So he is a jerk after all, huh?"

Despite herself, Michi laughed.

No. He wasn't.

Or, at least, she didn't think he was. Certainly, that parting kiss they'd shared hadn't been the kiss of a cold-hearted stranger. But maybe that had merely been her last glimpse of the sham that was Shuichi. Who was to say exactly who Kurama was beneath his façade? Not her.

She settled for an answer that was neither here nor there. "Didn't I say you can never tell if someone's a jerk?"

Runa cocked her head. Her curtain of hair swung over her shoulder, and Nanako blew it from her face with pantomimed ferocity. If Runa noticed, she didn't react. Instead, she kept her inky eyes on Michi and said, "Actually, point of clarification: you asked if there's a way to be sure someone's _not_ a jerk. Meaning lack of jerkdom can't be confirmed, but once an asshole shows his cards, they're out there for all to see. Therefore, the question stands. Is he a jerk?"

Wincing, Michi grabbed for her spoon. Taking a trick out of Runa's proverbial bag, she scarfed down a half-dozen mouthfuls of milkshake, eating so quick and desperate that a bout of brain freeze surged to the surface. Truthfully, it wasn't unwelcome—just another means of biding her time.

Still, even once she finished her hearty attack on the shake's depths, she'd only managed to devour the first third of it. The rest had begun to devolve into a mess of melting chocolate that might finally be easier to drink, but before she could give sipping a go, Runa dragged the old-fashioned cup out of reach. "Kuroki," she said warningly.

Michi fidgeted. "No. I don't think he's a jerk. But… he's not who I thought he was. And what we want in life isn't the same."

Yurie piped up, voice muffled as she dabbed a napkin over her lips, her lipgloss marred by sticky ice cream. "What sort of differences are we talking? Like he wants a picket fence and two-point-five kids, but you want a high-rise apartment and perennial freedom? Or like he wants some chick to stay home and be the perfect housewife, and that's just not you? Or no—that _he_ wants to be a househusband and you're not digging it. Or—"

"Yurie," Nanako hissed.

Instantly, Yurie clammed up. Her glossy lips pressed tight as sheepish silver unfurled in her threads. "Oops. Got carried away."

Nanako snorted. "You think?"

"Well?" Runa asked, ignoring them both. "Which is it?"

"None of that, really." Though maybe those issues would have arisen—or similar ones, in any event. They'd never talked that far in the future. Goodness, she wasn't even sure if he'd properly been her boyfriend. But as with so much else today, she couldn't very well say that.

And that was the way of it, wasn't it?

She'd stay here with the girls until her shake was done, however long that might take—Runa wouldn't let them leave until every last drop was consumed. All the while, they'd talk, and she was meant to commiserate, to whine and mope and drag Shuichi's name through the mud. But that was all easier said than done when the true name in need of dragging wasn't one she could share.

So be it, though.

This was her lot in life. This was the hole she'd dug for herself.

But she was climbing her way out now. Kurama was behind her. The halfway house was behind her. Every last piece of the arcane that she could shed from her life was part of her past, but it didn't have to be part of her future. So she lifted her head, squared her shoulders, and tugged her shake back from Runa. Lofting her spoon, she said, with all the declarative force she could muster, "Turns out, he likes secrets. A lot of them. And his friends are jerks. Therefore, let's say he's a jerk by association, and I've got no time for that."

The girls answered as one, their hands all curling around their shared glass and lifting it toward the ceiling, with a hearty, "Hear, hear!"

But it was beneath the table that Runa gave her true response. A brief nudge of Michi's foot. A knocking together of their knees. A sign that she was there, that she'd _always_ be there. No matter what.

* * *

"Weaver—"

Securing her phone against her shoulder to free both her hands, Michi interrupted, "I asked you not to call me that anymore."

Asato's sigh rattled through the phone in an unpleasant burst of static. "And I told you to go pound sand. It's a bullshit request, and you know it."

"It's not." Michi leaned against her kitchen counter and cranked on the sink faucet, glaring the frustration Asato had woken in her down at the unsuspecting dishes she'd allowed to pile up during her first week of second semester classes. "I'm done with all of that. You promised you'd accept my choice. Part of acceptance is abiding by my wishes."

"Calling you Weaver isn't about your territory." He huffed another groan. "I mean, sure, it started that way, and, obviously, it's a reference to your powers, but I don't think of any of that when I say it. You're Weaver to me. You have been for years. Stop trying to take that away."

"Asato, enough."

He went quiet, so quiet she nearly thought the line had gone dead.

When the silence held, she spoke again, picking her words with utmost care. "I don't want to be Weaver. I want to be— _need_ to be—Michi. I'm not exactly sure who she is yet, but I'm going to discover her. I know that doesn't mean escaping my territory. It's not going anywhere; that's clear enough. But I don't want to be defined by it—named for it." She scrubbed at a plate with desperate conviction, as if wiping the grime from its surface might, in turn, eradicate the foggy uncertainty hanging over her life. "If you can't make peace with that, then I'm not sure where you fit in."

"I… don't get it."

"Get what?"

"Of course, you're Michi. You've always been Michi. What is there to discover?"

Chewing the inside of her cheek, she propped the clean plate atop her drying rack and moved on to a bowl. "For years now, I've been pretending," she said slowly. "Acting like I'm still the person I used to be, the girl I was before my territory manifested. That's the face I show my parents, the face I show Runa and Yurie and Nanako, and it was the face I showed Kurama, too. It's only with you—and to lesser extent Yana and Kaito—that I let myself be whoever it is my territory made me." Her next words were chosen with purpose, meant to drive home her point, absolute and final. "I don't want to be either of those people. I want to find the place where they meet in the middle. I want to discover the single identity that they could become. I'm not sure how to do that, but I think it starts with finding my own place between the worlds, not trying to fit in beside yours."

"Michi—"

She ignored him, plowing ahead, her hands gone still beneath the scalding water pouring from the faucet. "Kurama knew about my territory. He'd known almost from the very beginning. And yet he didn't tell me. Because he valued his own secrets too much, I guess. I don't know. It doesn't matter, really. Either way, my stance doesn't change—nor does the fact that I can't become like him. I won't. I can't sink so deep into this double life that I won't share my whole self with people I love. I refuse to be two people when I could just be Michi."

Asato took his time replying, and when at last he gave voice to his thoughts, he lacked all his usual levity. The teasing that usually ribbed his tone was gone. In its stead, there was only a sobriety that matched the heaviness in Michi's heart.

"All right. I get it. No more Weaver. Unless you want that someday. Until then, you're Michi."

Dully, she forced her hands back to work, setting aside the bowl and reaching for another plate. "Thank you, Asato."

Another beat of quiet gathered before he whispered, "You said 'people you love.' Do you… Did you love him?"

She startled so abruptly her phone nearly slipped from her shoulder. Only a quick grab with a soaked hand kept it from crashing to the floor. "I—" Shaking her head, she cut herself off. She'd been about to say she wasn't sure, but that was a lie. She squeezed her eyes shut and breathed deep, then admitted the truth. "Not yet. But I could have."

* * *

Just three weeks into the semester, Michi knew her allotment of classes wasn't going to be a challenge. Not like the fall had been. Her new professors were pushovers, many of them still novices at teaching, and none had set a strenuous pace. Often, she finished her readings and assignments in the measly breaks between lectures, and by the time she rode the subway home in the mid-afternoon each day, she'd usually wrapped up any work she might've needed to bring home.

All of which left her with more free time than she knew what to do with. Six months prior, that would've meant Asato felt no guilt piling fresh transplant cases atop her shoulders, but now there were no halfway house arrivals dependent upon her.

Nor was there a charming stranger waiting aboard the subway.

It was mere convenience that her schedule hadn't included any evening classes this semester. She'd selected her course load in the fall, long before discovering the truth of Kurama's identity. In fact, back then, when she'd realized they'd no longer share their tri-weekly commute, she'd been sorely disappointed, as if losing their brief interludes aboard the train would put a damper on their relationship.

Now, that loss proved a boon.

Avoiding him during rush hour might not have been difficult. After all, Kurama had always boarded at the same door of the train. It would've required nothing more than a change in her own habits to disrupt the symmetry of their routes. But there was a certain sense of security that came from knowing he'd still be caught up at work while she made her way home. This way, she need not keep an eye out for crimson hair and muted threads.

She saw phantoms of them enough when she _wasn't_ looking. No need for added fuel to stoke her imagination's wicked flames.

Theoretically, all the early, homework-free nights her schedule left her with should've been the perfect opportunity to discover the Michi she'd told Asato about, but as it turned out, when given hours of time with no commitment, she tended to find herself on the couch in her living room, a blanket pooled in her lap and a controller clutched in her hands.

It became her ritual. Get home from Mushiyori University, game until an acceptable dinnertime, then venture out to meet up with the girls—or some combination thereof. Hours later, return to her apartment once more and hunker back on the couch, delving into whichever fantastical world had captured her attention most recently.

The irony didn't evade her.

Since the holidays, she'd turned the pattern of her life on its head, all to avoid demons and psychics and the nonsense they brought with them. And yet where did she find comfort? In worlds riddled with dragons and elves and all manner of vicious beasts.

The absurdity didn't stop her from playing, though.

* * *

On the Saturday after her fourth week of classes, Michi roused late in the morning and discovered a text from Runa waiting on her phone, informing her their plans for the afternoon had fallen through. Apparently, Runa's mother had called to insist upon an impromptu bonding day, and confronted with Mother Ito's fierce tenacity, Runa had caved.

Michi couldn't blame her. She'd have done the same.

Smiling wryly, she texted back, wishing the two a lovely day. Then, a yawn escaping her lips, she clambered free of her sheets.

Handed a day of endless freedom, Michi made little attempt at decency beyond a quick brush of her teeth, and she padded into the living room on bare feet, the cuffs of her ragged sweatpants catching beneath her heels. She settled on the couch, bringing her console to life with a button on the controller, then corralling her hair atop her head with a claw clip. Errant strands escaped her wrangling, tickling her neck as she slumped deeper into the cushions and hefted her controller.

Only, just as her thumb found the joystick, readying to navigate through the console's menus, the sharp rap of knuckles at her door stilled her fingers.

She hesitated a moment, half-convinced she must have imagined Runa's text. Maybe she was here, out in the hall, the front door's mere inch of wood all that separated her from the dozens of wards plastered across Michi's walls. In the next second, Michi was on her feet, bolting for the closest psychic parchment, braced to yank it down.

The voice came as her fingers closed over the paper's edge. Loud and booming. Brash and familiar.

"I can hear you in there! Come greet an old pal, would ya?"

Michi froze mid-stride, teetering on the ball of her left foot, and as her right came slamming down, driving into the floorboards with the same force her heart careened through the bottom on her stomach, a stranger said, "Urameshi, don't be so loud. Or obnoxious."

But whoever that second voice belonged to appeared not to be Yusuke's master, because his knock came again. Even louder now, pounding like a war drum. "Open up, kid!"

Her instincts and manners waged an internal debate without her consent. Let him in? Ignore him? A hundred pros and cons to each. Yet ultimately, there was only one choice, only one option that would satisfy him, and it was better to acquiesce now than drag this out. For her neighbors' sakes, if nothing else.

Beneath her hand trembling hand, the doorknob was cold as ice. It turned haltingly, her suddenly sweaty palm gliding jerkily over the metal. She cracked the door only a handful of inches, just enough to spot Yusuke's face, a grin wide across his lips, fire in his eyes, navy determination playing across his Loom in electric streaks. At his back, she caught sight of Kuwabara, the fourth Detective, loitering uncertainly, his dark eyes narrowed in frustration.

The Ties That Bind stretched between them like cables etched from rosy quartz.

"What are you doing here—"

Her question went unanswered, Yusuke shoving the door wider with a splayed palm and forcing his way over the threshold. The words died on her tongue as he sauntered past her and through the entryway, bracing his hands atop his hips and eyeing her place over with an intensity that made her stomach twist into knots. "Think you've got enough wards up? Jeez. No wonder you can't sense shit."

Still in the hallway, Kuwabara grimaced. "Urameshi, shut up." Then to Michi, the anger leaving his tone, he added, "Sorry about him."

Michi swallowed down a jibe about Yusuke's manners and what it meant that his friends were always apologizing for his behavior. She doubted it would've come out with the necessary bite. Not when she felt so completely breathless.

Her upbringing getting the best of her, she gestured Kuwabara inside and said again, "Why are you here?"

As the door clicked closed at Kuwabara's back, Yusuke whirled to them. "We gave you six weeks to get over your tantrum," he said. "If that wasn't enough time to stop moping, then you've got serious issues to work through."

"Excuse me?"

He braced his hands on his hips and leaned toward her, invading her space. "Listen, kid—"

"Stop calling me that," she ground out. "You're no older than I am."

He snorted. "Maybe stop acting like some toddler who got her feelings hurt on the playground and I'll stop treating you like one." His eyes swept her up and down, and he cocked his head. "I don't think I've ever seen you not in a dress."

Despite herself, she smoothed a self-conscious hand over her ragged top, but she managed to keep the other from rising to her wild hair. "I wasn't exactly expecting visitors."

"Uh huh," he said disbelievingly. "I'm sure it has nothing to do with you holing up here and avoiding the world. Not one bit." He rolled his eyes. "You realize we talk to Kido all the time, don't you?"

No, she didn't. Since she'd forbidden Asato to call her Weaver, their contact had been limited. She'd been busy with university starting up, and he… Well, she imagined she knew what kept him preoccupied, but she'd been all too happy knowing nothing of the details.

Not that any of that was Yusuke's business.

Thankfully, Kuwabara saved her from needing to admit as much.

"Yusuke, seriously!" he barked behind her, so loud and sudden Michi winced and startled forward a step, nearly colliding with Yusuke's chest. The detective stepped neatly backward, evading her perfectly, but as he opened his yap to start mouthing off again, Kuwabara overrode him. "You're out of your tree if you think berating her is going to get us anywhere. Knock it off."

Michi fought for calm, ignoring the first kiss of a headache already smarting behind her eyes as their Looms tangled. The Ties That Bind stretched between the men in tight, pearly strands, but crimson frustration snapped through Kuwabara's threads, swarming amongst Yusuke's tangle of too-bright amusement, bleeding across the cobalt.

Twisting her fingers into knots at her sides, she looked between them both and said with determined calm, "Tell me why you're here or get out. Now." And then, because she was an overly polite fool who couldn't help herself, she added, "Please."

The Detectives shared a long look, each glaring, though the icy blue spreading through Yusuke's Loom declared that his intensity was born of haughty pride, not anger. Then he shoved his hands into the pockets of his bright green jacket and rolled his shoulders into a shrug. "Got sick of waiting for you to come around, I guess. So we're here to collect you."

"Why?"

"Because we need your help."

That came from Kuwabara, and she turned to him, studying his unusual features. His high, cutting cheekbones. His crop of styled, orange curls. His dark, emphatic eyes, swimming with emotions as visible as those of his Loom. He was at once a stranger, and yet oddly familiar—thanks, no doubt, to the endless stories Yukina had told of her about Kazuma during Michi's months at Genkai's shrine.

He offered a lopsided smile. "I know we haven't met properly, and it's weird to ask for favors, but we could use one. Genkai and Kido say you're the only person who can see what's wrong with the transplant demons. Without you, we're fumbling blind." His lips' tentative curl morphed to a grin. "What do you say?"

"I can't."

The grin died quick as it came. Kuwabara's brow furrowed, and out of the corner of her eye, Michi saw Yusuke heave a dramatic huff.

"Just because I can see the transplants' white threads doesn't mean I can help. My territory doesn't do that. It's—"

"Better than anything we have now," Kuwabara interrupted hurriedly. "Come on. Please. Four more demons have gone off the rails since New Years. If we don't work out what's going on, Spirit World is going to insist on sending the transplants back to Demon World. You've got to help us. You've got to at least try."

Except, she didn't.

She'd made her position clear, first to Genkai, then to Asato. That they'd ignored her wishes and, worse, that they'd sent these Detectives to collect her in their place enraged her. Anger like she rarely felt rose in her chest, bottling in her throat. She forced words past it. "I assure you, there's nothing my territory can offer you. I've tried. It got me nowhere. Taki is no better than—"

"But you _do_ make him better," Kuwabara said, cutting her off yet again. Whatever warmth Yukina's stories had bestowed in her toward him flickered and died. "You got through to him, out at Genkai's. No one else could. And no one has since. But you did."

"Not because of my powers. I spoke to him. I listened to him and I saw him and I validated his pain, and that's all. It wasn't some psychic magic. Any of you could do the same."

"Enough of this," Yusuke snapped. His hand closed over her elbow, towing her around to face him. "We think we're losing Ryota," he said, clipping each word tight, as if fighting to control his temper, black surging across his threads. "He's one of yours, isn't he? Don't you care what happens to him?"

Ryota.

Gentle, reserved Ryota. So dark and somber he could've ceased to exist amongst a deep enough shadow. Ryota who had wanted so earnestly to make a home here, to carve out a life in the foreign world Hiei had promised him.

"What's happened to him?" she whispered.

"He's not answering our calls, and there have been strange reports coming out of Itomori." Yusuke shot a frown at Kuwabara, who only shook his head before Yusuke plowed ahead. "We're going to the village. Now. And you're coming with us."

She wrested free of his grip and sagged against the wall, burying her fingers in the hair, loosening the claw clip's already tenuous grip. This wasn't what she wanted. She'd wanted space—time to make sense of her life. But there was no time. She wasn't so heartless as to ignore that truth.

And so, she would go. Despite everything she'd said to Asato, she would go. Because she was weak and lost and so utterly foolish, she would go.

Her hands fell free of her hair. "I need time to get ready."

Ice blue and teal flared across Yusuke's threads in streaks of pleased pride. "You've got twenty minutes. Then our asses need to be on a train to Itomori." He glanced into her living room, gaze sweeping over the mess she'd allowed to accumulate. "We'll wait on the street with Hiei and Kurama. If you're not down in twenty minutes, I'll break this door down and drag you out myself."

The threat didn't register.

She'd stopped listening.

Hiei and Kurama.

 _Kurama_.

Of course.

* * *

AN: Well, it turns out, I couldn't keep Michi separate from the boys for long, now could I? Where would be the fun in that?

I've been thrilled throughout this story with how much people have loved Michi's circle of friends. I adore them all, and it was fun to finally get them all in person together. Great girl friends are so important and yet so often undervalued (especially in media). It's nice to highlight Michi's support network where I can. Plus, I was starved for Yusuke and Kuwabara shenanigans, so the second half of this chapter was a blast. In essence, this chapter was a joy to write. I hope it was fun to read, too!

With that, it's time for another sharing of the music that inspires this story. In this case, it's 'Girls Chase Boys' by Ingrid Michelson, particularly the lines: "You play me, now I play you, too / Let's just call it over / All the broken hearts in the world still beat / Let's not make it harder than it has to be." (Is this how Michi feels? Or she wishes she feels? I'm afraid my lips are sealed.)

The response to last chapter blew me away. Seriously, y'all. I'm so glad it landed the way it did and that you all loved it as much as you have. Quite simply, hearing from readers makes my day every single time. Thank you all for being so wonderfully supportive. (Also, this story has nearly passed my last fic _Once We've Fallen_ in reviews, and that completely boggles my mind. Thank you, thank you, thank you!) Big shout out to: E.V. Delacy, ballet022, xenocanaan, LadyEllesmere, La Femme Absurde, TECHNICALpanda, Emzybubble, WistfulSin, knightsqueen05, Dear author, Guest, shewritesfic, and Guest!

(Oh, and next chapter is a doozy. So see you next week, yeah?)


	19. Not-So-White Knight

Michi didn't rush.

Yusuke had granted her twenty minutes, and she had no intention of wasting a single one. She needed each and every second to gird herself, to build armor around her heart as sturdy as chainmail and steel-plate.

Those protections took shape as sleek leggings and a long sweater, not quite a dress and yet much too lengthy for a mere shirt. Its cable knitting granted her bolstering comfort, and she ran her fingers along the smooth braiding as she puzzled over her reflection in the bathroom mirror. There was no time to curl her hair, nor the chance to straighten it, and so she swept its loose waves up into a ponytail, then slid a headband into place to tamp down any wayward wisps. Makeup came last of all, just enough to give her face life. Just because Yusuke and Kuwabara had seen her hollow eyes didn't mean the world had to.

Yet even with all her careful preparation, she stood at her front door with five minutes to spare before Yusuke's deadline.

She dawdled there, watching each minute tick past on her phone's analog clock, wishing she'd responded differently to Runa's change of plans. She could've asked to tag along. Mother Ito would've been overjoyed. Then Michi would've been armed with an excuse, a defense—however flimsy—that might've allowed her to wriggle free of the trap waiting on the street below.

Too bad she'd been content to while the day away with nothing but her games and her couch for company. It was her own fault for seizing any opportunity to avoid the Loom of Life lurking beyond her wards.

Once her last minute slid away, she dragged on her boots, zipped up her coat, and slipped into the hall. Her heart beat against her breastbone as she jogged down the stairs and emerged into the watery, winter sunlight.

As promised, the Detectives waited at the edge of her stoop. Yusuke loitered in his green jumper, his hands looped behind his head, shirt come untucked from his jeans, as sure a sign as any of his practiced apathy to the world. Kuwabara stood to his left, shoulders hunched inside his own jacket as he bent toward Hiei. Crimson snapped through the Kuwabara's Loom, and if Michi had cared to decipher his words, she was sure she'd unearth insults within them—not that Hiei seemed to be listening.

For his part, Hiei had turned his head away, looking across the street, his gaze bored and unfocused. Standing there, on the sidewalk beside her building, she was struck by the absurdity of his clothes. After dozens of debriefings with him, she'd grown accustomed to his coarse trousers and strange, black cloak. But those meetings had been in a park far across the city, not outside her home, and now there was no missing the stares he garnered or the oddness of the figure he cut.

But then, maybe she noticed all those things now only because she was desperate to focus on _anything_ other than the final member of their foursome.

At the sight of her, Yusuke made a great show of checking a nonexistent watch upon his wrist. "Cut it close, huh?"

She ignored him. "You mentioned the train, correct?"

Kuwabara straightened and turned his back on Hiei. The smile he directed at her gleamed brighter than the sun. "We sure did, and we already bought your ticket, so don't worry about that."

They'd purchased her ticket? Meaning they'd known she'd come. By sheer force of will, if nothing else, they'd been confident they'd drag her with them.

Perhaps she should've been angry. A part of her wanted to be. On paper, it was infuriating that these men thought they could waltz into her Saturday and abscond with her weekend plans. But try though she might, she could muster no ire.

Not once her gaze landed on Kurama.

She'd known she couldn't avoid looking at him forever, but she'd envisioned lasting longer than she did. Goodness, she'd intended to turn such a stubborn blind eye that he'd eventually have no choice but to grab her by the shoulders and force her gaze to his. Too bad she'd overestimated her own will. As it was, one moment she was frowning back at Kuwabara's gigawatt smile, and the next, she'd met Kurama's viridian eyes, her attention seemingly pulled by invisible magnets.

Nothing of their last encounter flickered in the depths of his irises. Instead, she found only calm, polite distance, a sentiment echoed in his threads, an aquamarine serenity so muted it barely existed at all. As if they were little more than acquaintances. As if they had not dated for months. As if he had not slept beside her, their hands laced in the dark. As if he had not carved out a space in her heart that still ached with emptiness.

As if they were nothing.

As if _she_ were nothing.

Whatever veneer of poise she'd managed to craft in the half hour since Yusuke and Kuwabara disturbed her morning crumbled away. She was again standing in Genkai's living room, surrounded by partygoers, staring dumbstruck as Kurama walked through the doorway at Hiei's side, her whole world cracking clean in two.

Then her fingers plunged into her purse. She hauled free her tangled earbuds and slotted them into her headphone jack. "I'll go with you," she said, jerking her gaze back to Kuwabara and shoving the first bud into her ear, "but on my terms."

Hiei swung his focus her way for the first time, an inky brow crooking. "Meaning what?"

"I'm walking ahead." Only a colossal effort forced her legs to back up her words, but slowly they obeyed, carrying her down the sidewalk with stiff strides. "Your Looms are… overwhelming. If you want me to be any use, let me ignore you."

She didn't wait for a response before pressing her other earbud into place and tapping play on her favorite playlist of classical music. These songs formed the usual sound barrier she erected on her subway rides home, during her half-successful attempts to distract herself from the Loom of Life's blinding light. Now they would become the helm of her armor, the last piece of her steel-plate ensemble.

A whoop of riled laughter pierced the brief lull precipitating the music's first notes, and though she didn't glance back to confirm, she was sure Yusuke trailed in her wake, the others not far behind. Driving her toward fresh torture. Like the dogs of hell nipping at her heels.

Oh, how horridly wrong this Saturday had gone.

* * *

Unlike the train she'd ridden with Ryota, the one she boarded with the Detectives was new and modern, so far removed from the decrepit locomotive she'd taken with the transplant it was almost laughable. There was no rattle or clank as the train churned out of the station, just smooth, easy motion. Maybe that was why Kuwabara felt no qualms about twisting around in his seat and propping his chin atop its headrest. On a ride as gentle as this, there was little fear of motion sickness.

Despite her better judgement, she pulled a headphone free of her ear. "Yes?"

He glanced sidelong at Yusuke, who swiveled around to face her as well, scrabbling onto his knees and bracing his elbows atop the back of his seat. Smiling sheepishly, Kuwabara said, "I know you asked for space, but I'm curious why. You said our Looms—that's our emotions, right?—are overwhelming. What's that mean?"

Painfully aware that Kuwabara had drawn Kurama and Hiei's attention from their booth across the aisle, Michi smoothed a finger down her sweater's cabling. "Should we really discuss this here? In public?"

Yusuke scoffed. "We're the only people in this whole car. It's not like anyone else is hauling ass out to Itomori today. No one's going to overhear, and even if they did, they'd never make sense of what you're saying. I mean, it sure as hell doesn't make any sense to me, and Genkai's been yapping on about it for weeks."

Well.

There went her excuse.

Lacing her fingers together over her crossed legs, she drew a breath into her lungs. "Looms show more than just emotions, though that's the aspect I pay attention to most—or can block out least, I should say—but threads reveal other things as well. Like connections between people, and the bonds between the four of you are unpleasantly bright."

It was true.

She hadn't evaded them on the journey to the train station purely to avoid Kurama, though that had undeniably been her primary motivation. Last time she'd seen them all together, she'd been too overcome by a million other horrors to pay their Ties That Bind full attention, but her distractions were far fewer now, and all those pearlescent threads lashed against her awareness like sharp, gleaming cables. The Ties were _so_ prevalent, sluicing between the Detectives in a latticework of interconnectedness, and combined with Yusuke's typical electric brilliance and Hiei's vicious sharpness, their Looms were almost too much to stomach—and absolutely too much to look at indefinitely.

"Bonds?" Yusuke asked. "Between us? Are you saying we love each other, because in case you missed it, I don't swing that—"

"They're called the Ties That Bind. Or at least, that's what the old psychics who trained to read the Loom of Life called affinities like yours." She forced herself to glance at each of them in turn—even Kurama. "They're not inherently romantic. Rather they manifest between souls linked by deep kinship. I've been thinking of you all as Threadbrothers because the bond is more familial than anything else."

"And ours are particularly bothersome?" Kurama asked, voice soft, cordial but not warm.

The sheer indifference in his tone cleaved an abyss through her hollow chest. She didn't understand this person he'd become. What was he doing? Why was he treating her like this? How could he be so thoroughly unfazed by all that had passed between them?

Why was his heart not as broken as hers?

Whatever the answer, he couldn't be allowed to see how easily he whittled her down to her raw, tender core. Urging her voice to stay steady, she locked her focus on her interwoven fingers. "No. I've nothing to compare your Ties against, so they can't be particularly anything. The Ties are an exceedingly rare connection. Before seeing the four of you, I'd never witnessed them in person."

Silence descended, and she peeked up in bewilderment, only to find matching confusion scrawled across their faces. Kuwabara gawked at her, throat working but no sound emerging, and Yusuke's head swung like a pendulum, from Kuwabara to Hiei to Kurama and back again. Across the aisle, Kurama and Hiei wore expressions of twin wonder, muted but unmissable, though when her gaze met Hiei's, he melded his lips back into their usual sneer, his eyes narrowing.

Over them all, the Ties That Bind stretched and tightened, flashing like stunning rose gold before dimming back to their usual pearly hue. In turn, the Detectives' Looms were awash in aqua contentment and lavender affection.

It was the startled lime flickering here and there that clued her in to the cause of their quiet.

What a bomb it must have been, to hear that the friendship palpable between them was not mere camaraderie, but a soul deep bond, one few people discovered in all their years of living. As close as they were, it could hardly be world-shattering. Surely, they'd known this about themselves in some capacity. But perhaps there was an affirmation to it, in knowing the links connecting them belonged to something greater than themselves, something grand enough to see itself written into the very Loom of Life.

Maybe that was a shock they weren't sure how to cope with.

Yusuke found his voice first. "You've had your territory six years, yeah?"

She nodded.

"But we're the only ones with these—" He gestured a bit wildly, his hands fluttering about, fingers flicking as if he were tossing clouds of faerie dust.

"Ties That Bind," she supplied.

"Right, that. It's just us?"

"Yes."

He whistled lowly, as if struck by the enormity of it, and slumped in his seat, sliding downward until only his eyes were visible above the headrest. But then, quick as his moment of awed gravity had come, his usual cavalier vigor surged revving back and he lurched upright once more. With a devilish grin, he announced, "I knew you bastards cared more than you let on."

Kuwabara jabbed an elbow into Yusuke's ribs, knocking him into the window. "Oh, shut up. As if we didn't prove that against Sensui, when we were going to die avenging you after he killed your dumb ass."

Michi's breath stuttered in her lungs. The phrases he'd just uttered… _Die avenging you. Killed your dumb ass_. Those were not things people declared so carelessly. No matter how profoundly friends loved one another, they didn't die to prove it. And the other bit… _Killed your dumb ass._

She stared at Yusuke.

He grinned right back. "What? Kido never told you about Sensui? I'd have thought he'd never stop—"

Thoughtlessly—desperately—she lurched to her feet, clutching her purse and scrambling to wrangle her headphones' tangled cord. "I need space," she said in a rush. "All your Looms are giving me a headache. At this rate, I'll be useless by the time we get to Itomori."

Then her headphones were in and she was bolting to the back of the train car. She threw herself into the very last row, as far from the Detectives as she could get, and drew her knees to her chest. Every breath felt pained, not because of a headache, though perhaps one of those truly wasn't far off, but because she was back in this world. Trapped again.

And all the more lost than she'd ever been before.

* * *

Itomori had changed.

In winter, all of the town's unassuming charm was gone, especially on the winding dirt road Michi led the Detectives down. Ryota's home waited at its end, still hidden from sight behind the skeleton branches of a hundred leafless trees. When last she'd been here, sunlight dappled through shifting leaves, painting the path in golden and auburn light. Now it cast grayscale shadows, scraggly claws that tore through the pitted earth and slunk over snowdrifts.

Hunching into a brisk wind, Michi hugged her jacket closer. Her fingers knotted in the fabric over her ribs, clutching tight as she staved off a shiver.

It was impossible to imagine Ryota here. Against the trees' gray bark and the snow's unflinching white, he'd be reduced to little more than a dark wraith. A creature as at odds with this place's serene nature as one could ever be. And though she knew not a stitch of violence lived within the demon's bones, a chill settled in her spine at the thought of meeting him alone upon this path.

Trying in vain to shake off that thought, she glanced at Kuwabara and said, "Sorry. I missed your question."

As they'd deboarded the train, she'd bundled up her headphones and tucked them away. Here, at last, she gave up the flimsy defense of her headaches. After all, once they reached Ryota and the white threads she feared they'd find, even a thousand bearers of the Ties That Bind wouldn't rival the pain her territory saddled her with.

The moment her earbuds disappeared from sight, Kuwabara had started in on questions again. Kind, but overwhelmingly curious. His Loom shone with such vivid emerald it nearly made up for the trees' barren branches. No leaf could rival a green that striking.

She'd done her best to answer, though she couldn't shake the unsettling sensation of Hiei and Kurama walking at their backs, listening, watching, but otherwise contributing nothing. Yusuke had loped ahead and now strolled backward, hands buried deep in his pockets, but if he was paying attention or not, she couldn't be sure. The glazed over haze in his eyes suggested not, but his Loom's flitting emerald and mossy anticipation hinted at disguised interest.

Or maybe he was simply wondering what awaited them ahead.

What horror they might uncover in Ryota's home.

Grinning at her, Kuwabara lofted a hand, his little finger extended. "I asked if you could see the Pinky String connecting me to my beloved Yukina. Urameshi always claims it's bullshit, but I know it's there. It's red—"

"Crimson is the color of annoyance, not love," Michi interrupted softly. Her boots crunched through a thin glaze of ice along the road's edge, and she feigned catching her balance as she snuck a glance back at Hiei. Scarlet irritation had bloomed across his Loom at Kuwabara's mention of Yukina—oddly fitting considering the explanation she was giving. "Where the Red String of Fate myth came from, I can't really say, but its name is a misnomer. The Loom of Life's designation for love is indigo."

Kuwabara frowned, first at her, then at his pinky. "So it's purple then?"

She shook her head. "There's no thread connecting you to Yukina. Not one that's visible when you aren't in each other's vicinity, anyway."

"Oh…"

"It's not unusual—nor a negative reflection on your relationship," she said. "I get why hearing about the Ties That Bind would make you think Looms are often connected, but they aren't. I mean, they interlink loosely, particularly when people are near each other. Emotions feed into one another. One person's happiness can heighten their friend's and so on. But that's all. Even with the Ties, I didn't know you possessed them until I saw you together."

Ahead, Yusuke had perked up, his head tilting sideways as his Loom bloomed with deep emerald. It appeared she had his attention now. "So what it is you usually see?" he asked.

"Just emotions." She blocked out the rest, best she could. But the Detectives didn't need those details. They didn't deserve them. To that end, she squared her shoulders and forced her hands to relax, willing away the defensive tension that had coiled between her shoulder blades. "But unless I'm mistaken, I'm not here to teach you about my territory. I'm here for Ryota. So, why? Why do you think he needs me?"

Yusuke rolled his eyes. "Fine, kid. No more questions. Have it your way."

At her back, his voice still cool as a stream of snowmelt, Kurama clarified, "Ryota has gone radio silent. We've not heard from him in over a week, despite Yana reaching out daily. In light of the circumstances, his silence seems cause enough for concern."

"We thought maybe you could talk to him the way you did Taki." Kuwabara flashed a wavering smile. "He might respond better to you than any of us."

She doubted that.

Her relationship with Ryota was nothing like the one she shared with Taki. Her bond with the stoneskin demon had developed over years, not a singular train ride. If there was anyone who might get through to Ryota while he was under duress, she'd stake her money on it being Hiei. Ryota's reverent respect for the prickly jerk was incomprehensible, but that didn't make it any less potent.

"We hoped, also," Kurama added, "that you might note any oddities in his Loom. Presumably he'll bear the same white threads Taki does. If so, it would be good to have confirmation."

She hated it—the way he spoke to her now. Despised it. Loathed it with a smoldering rage that smoked in her gut, tendrils of smog seeping like rot through her heart.

So blasé. So indifferent.

So unrecognizable.

On the night she'd discovered the truth, he'd shown flashes of Shuichi. Between moments of predatory intensity, he'd still been the man she'd known. And the morning after… She'd been sure she was making a mistake, that she'd misjudged him, that he was still Shuichi after all.

But the face he wore now belonged to a stranger. It lacked even the wily, fox-like cunning that had so unnerved her on Genkai's back porch. This mask was utterly callous in its sheer civility. So gracious and courteous and poised. An undeniable reminder of what had been true all along.

He was in control. He always had been. Of himself. Of their relationship. Of what she knew.

The only time his control slipped had been as he walked through that doorway in Genkai's, in that fractured moment when their eyes met. And even then, only a ripple of disbelief had swept over him before his calm returned, absolute in its surety.

A demon soul in a human body, Kaito had said.

She believed it.

After a beat, she said, "I can't stress enough how little that will get you. If his threads are white, you're no closer to determining what's wrong than if they aren't."

"Not true," he countered, and in two quick strides, he'd drawn even with her, his gaze flicking sideways in her direction as the trees opened up ahead. "A pattern might emerge. Data is always useful."

"You sound like Kaito," Michi said, because it was true—and because she thought perhaps it would hurt him. But Kuwabara stumbled to a halt, a pallor sweeping into his cheeks as surprise and fear and suspicion spilled in swathes of green across his Loom, and if Kurama reacted at all, Michi missed it.

"Shit," Kuwabara muttered, grimacing. "Does this place feel as wrong to you guys as it does to me?"

Yusuke froze comically, lurching to a standstill, one foot raised, arms halfway through a swing, then he turned and puzzled over the clearing ahead. Michi wasn't sure what he detected—and she certainly didn't know what Kuwabara felt. All she saw was Ryota's cottage nestled in the small glade, snowdrifts gathered against its tiny porch, the curtains drawn sloppily inside the windows.

But she witnessed the shift in the boys. Their Looms tangled into knots of lime and mint, and the distinctly metallic clink of Hiei drawing his katana echoed off the bare trees. At her side, Kurama's posture changed. Minutely. If he weren't so close, she might not have noticed. It was little more than a bending of his knees, a loosening of his shoulders—as if he were prepping for… a fight? An attack?

Either way, quite suddenly the fox had returned, staring back at her from the exquisite angles of Kurama's face. "I sense it," he confirmed, eyes on her even though his words were meant for the boys. Green like grass beneath frost flitted across his threads—anticipation?—only to be replaced by a washed-out blue, steadfast will sweeping into place. "Be mindful. We should proceed cautiously."

His statement was like a veiled command.

In answer, the other men swept into formation, drawing up in a diamond of protection around her. Hiei and his katana at her back. Kuwabara on her left, hands curled into fists, his body rigid as he surveyed Ryota's little cottage. Yusuke ahead, the knuckles of one hand taking on that unearthly blue she'd first witnessed months ago, back when she'd discovered him looming over Taki's trembling frame.

Last of all, Kurama. Standing to her right. Still with that strange intensity coiled within him. After weeks upon weeks of Shuichi's tranquil demeanor, she couldn't miss this shift in him, and yet it remained impossible to nail down exactly what had altered inside his core.

He granted her a faint smile, mirthless yet intended to comfort, seemingly trying to convince her that because he could force his lips to curl, that must mean whatever had him up in arms was not truly worth fearing. His gaze remained locked with hers as his right hand swept upward, delving into his locks of crimson hair. When it reappeared, his forefinger and thumb were pinched tight, as if concealing something between the pads of his calloused fingertips.

"Guys," Kuwabara said, breaking the uneasy stillness that had overcome them. "When I say this place feels wrong, I mean shit-your-pants, nightmare-fuel levels of wrong. I haven't felt anything like it in years. Not since before I figured out what my awareness even was."

"Back when you called it the 'tickle feeling?'" Yusuke asked with a dry snort, one not matched by any trace of cobalt amusement in his threads.

"Shut up, Urameshi."

"There's no demon energy in that house," Hiei growled, uninterested in their bickering. Michi shifted until he appeared in her peripheral vision, and she found him glaring at the cottage, his grip white on the hilt of his katana. He added through clenched teeth, "I sense nothing of Ryota."

"You mean the twerp's not here?" Yusuke demanded.

Michi barely registered the bark of Hiei's retort. Her attention had caught on Ryota's home, transfixed after following the line of Hiei's sight.

What he was saying made no sense.

Ryota _was_ here. She could see him—or his Loom, at least.

If it even deserved to be called that.

The sudden press of a thumb against her elbow drew her back to herself. The rest of Kurama's fingers were not far behind, curling into the crook of her arm as he stepped closer.

His gaze had left her at last, roving first to the cottage and now to his former teammates. There was a strange slant to the way he held his head, his nose slightly upturned, his hair drifting across the forehead in a manic dance as he angled into the breeze. "We're downwind," he said softly.

Of what? Ryota's cottage?

The squabble between Yusuke and Hiei died out.

A shiver wracked through Kuwabara. He shook out his arms and shoulders wildly, seemingly trying to chase his nerves from his bones. Fear streaked in lines of forest green through his threads, brittle as pine needles. "I don't think we should be here."

Hiei ignored him. "What do you smell, fox?"

 _Oh_. That's what Kurama was doing. _Smelling_. Using the wind. Rooting around for Ryota like a canine might track prey.

"Death." His grip tightened on her elbow. He would not meet her eyes. "There's something rotting in that house."

She gritted her teeth, an involuntary hand rising to her temple, pressing against the ache growing there like an infection, bleeding out through her veins. "No. Ryota _is_ here. I can see him." Or so she assumed. She couldn't imagine who else it might be.

Yusuke shook his head. "Listen, kid, if Hiei says Ryota's not in there, then he's not in there."

"Well, someone is."

Kuwabara's brow furrowed. An unmistakable green tinge had bloomed in his cheeks, and he looked for all the world like he might be sick right there on the icy path. "I don't feel anyone except us here, Michi."

"Yes, you do."

She had their attention now. Even Yusuke wasn't rushing to dismiss her anymore.

Kurama's fingers burned like brands through her layers as she said, "You can't see their Loom, but I think you're sensing it." She pointed toward the house. "There are threads in there. But only white ones as far as I can tell from here. I need to get closer—"

"No," Kurama said flatly. Even now, he wouldn't make eye contact.

Frustration rose in her. She scrabbled at his wrist, grabbing for his fingers and seeking to pry herself free. He did not budge. Giving up, she tried to stride forward. Again, he did not budge. His grip on her arm morphed into an anchor, a manacle from which she could not escape.

"You brought me here to assess him, didn't you? Let me do so."

"Michi," he said, and at last, his gaze found hers. For the first time all day, she recognized the soul inside the boundless viridian. Something in her chest cracked near in two as she realized what she hadn't before. His reservation, his distance—perhaps they weren't weapons meant to hurt her, but armor intended to guard _him_ , armor not so different from her own.

Goodness.

Could that truly be?

"I don't think you should see whatever's inside that house," he continued when she made no further move to fight him. "You've expressed how you feel about all this, about demonkind and Spirit World and everything else your territory brings with it. Seeing what waits in there… It isn't something you'll easily come back from."

Because something dead waited inside the cottage. That's what he'd said—what he'd _smelled_. Perhaps it was just the corpse of an animal, decomposing and forgotten. Perhaps it wasn't. Either way, could she stomach it? Could she walk away from this place having borne witness to whatever lurked inside that cottage and still claim to be Michi?

Did it matter?

Ryota was in there. She was sure he was. And his Loom was turning white—or already had turned entirely—which meant he was hurting. More than hurting. It meant he was broken. Maybe in ways she couldn't dream to fix. Maybe he'd become vicious and wild, as set upon hurting as Junko had been.

But maybe he'd be like Taki. Maybe she _could_ help. Not because of her territory, but because she offered something a bunch of ex-Spirit Detectives and their weapons couldn't.

If that were the case, didn't she have to try?

Could she live with herself if she didn't?

"I appreciate the concern," she said, and though the words could've harbored sarcasm, no trace of insincerity coated their edges. "But I think Ryota's inside that place, and he needs help. He needs me—you're the ones who said that first."

Kurama looked unconvinced, a fine line drawn across his forehead. His pale Loom was such a tangle of colors that her temples smarted at the mere sight. Washed out mustard anxiety. Dew-covered moss anticipation. Prickling forest green fear.

Purples she couldn't dwell on without her heart twisting in on itself.

"Michi," he began again.

This time, Yusuke didn't let him carry on. "Kurama, we brought her for a reason. If she's seeing something and none of us are sensing it, then we need to figure out what the hell is going on."

"Urameshi's right," Kuwabara managed to say between heaving, nauseated pants. "The sooner, the better."

"Keep down your breakfast, oaf. None of us will hold your hair back if you don't." Dead leaves crunched beneath Hiei's boots as he strode forward, passing on their right and drawing even with Yusuke. He glanced over his shoulder at Kurama, then allowed his crimson gaze to settle on Michi. "Let the girl investigate." He left something unsaid. Michi could feel it, grating against her bones. It twanged in the Ties That Bind, those pearlescent cords that hung between the boys in thick strands.

Given a guess, she'd reckon it hinted at violence held at bay by the thinnest of margins.

Kurama deliberated a moment longer, face unreadable, Loom no further illuminating. Then his grip loosened, one finger after another coming free of her elbow. "Tread carefully."

Not guidance she needed, but she nodded nonetheless. "Of course."

They moved as a unit, Yusuke and Kuwabara falling to the rear, Hiei assuming point, and Kurama remaining firmly at her side, his hands having ostensibly retreated to his own space, though she suspected he could have her firmly in his grip far quicker than any human might manage. A thin layer of snow blanketed the clearing, and a film of ice had coalesced atop its surface, but that sheeting cracked beneath them, announcing their every footfall.

With each stride, the white threads snarled within the cottage grew clearer, a Loom drawing into crystalline focus. White on white on white. No color within it. No deep blues or lively greens, no stinging yellows or sharp reds. Just white. All the way through to the core.

Sweat slicked her palms as they reached the front steps. Hiei shifted aside, allowing her to pass up the stairs first. Kurama loosed a sound of protest, but a glare from Hiei stilled him. And so, it was Michi alone who climbed onto the porch.

Her head pounded. Her pulse raced. Yet she found her voice, forcing his name past her lips. "Ryota?"

No answer proved forthcoming.

Her head split near in two as her territory shrieked.

Trembling, she forced herself onward. Two more steps had her at the door, and it was only then that she noticed it stood ajar, the latch not quite caught. Her stomach dropping into her boots, she raised a hand to the paneling, but no sooner had she begun to push than did the stench hit her. Rot and disease swamped her senses, her next breath choking into her lungs, bringing on its heels a wave of sickening sweetness.

The smell of death.

Just as Kurama had promised.

Had her territory not been screaming quite so profoundly, she might've bent over and heaved up her breakfast, the pitiful prepackaged pastry she'd purchased in the train station's lobby. As it was, she forced away the nausea and called out again. "Ryota? Are you in there?"

Again, no answer came.

But there was a shift, a flutter of commotion, however slight. It took her a second to realize the movement—one she'd witnessed before—had come from the white threads. A tightening. A raveling.

And then a snap. Followed by a dozen more. Break after break after break. Dozens of white threads fraying into pieces before fading out of existence entirely.

Except fraying wasn't the right word.

This wasn't like the breakage she'd perceived in Taki's Loom. These threads pulled taut, yes, but more like tripwires than over-twisted strings, and when they snapped, they did so in clusters, as if grabbed with a fist and cleaved by deftly clutched scissors, the cut smooth and fluid.

In answer, her territory rioted, and she staggered, a gasp tumbling forth unbidden. Her unsteady feet carried her into the door and it swung inward, exposing her to the full reek of the cottage—and more than that, exposing her to the demon hunched within.

Ryota struck like a beast, animalistic in his fervor. A screaming, snarling creature. Claws extended. Incisors bared in a frothing mouth.

He drew within inches of her.

Then a scorching hand seized her shoulder and hurled her backward, shoving her into a familiar grip, a lean yet muscled embrace that hauled her off the porch. Despite herself, she struggled, turning back, watching from the cage of Kurama's arms as Hiei fended off Ryota's shrieking attacks.

Hiei's voice carried through the clearing, but she made out little of his shouts, nothing beyond a vague sense that he was warning Ryota to back off. To stand down. To _listen_ , damn it. But there was no reasoning with the creature before them. Ryota was shadow and wrath incarnate, striking over and over, heedless of the dozen warning slashes Hiei opened across his arms.

Kurama spoke, then, trying to turn her away, trying to hold her attention. But she couldn't obey. Her territory wouldn't let her. It had to see—had to bear witness.

So see she did.

She saw Hiei's stance changed. She watched his two-handed grip on his katana slide wider. She witnessed his final warning. She noted pink regret and chartreuse pain stain across his threads. Then she saw him drive his blade through Ryota's innards and heave it up, up, up, cleaving the shadowy demon from left hip to right shoulder, sending his corpse tumbling down the porch's rickety steps, dead before it hit the earth.

And she saw, too, as Ryota's Loom dissipated. Here one moment, gone the next. His threads not breaking so much as ceasing to be, severed from the Loom of Life as surely as if Hiei had sheared through the strings with his sword directly.

It felt as though she were crumbling into pieces. Her territory raged and writhed and screeched. Searing pain rippled in her skull, her eyes burning as she sagged into Kurama.

The first sob tore from her throat like glass.

"Michi," he whispered. "You're okay. Michi, look at me."

She couldn't.

But she pressed closer, clutching at his orange jacket, sealing her face against the curve of his neck. Tears burned hot against her cheeks, spilling across his collarbone.

He hugged her tighter. A hand rose to her head, stroking through her hair. "You're okay," he said again. And then, when that seemed not to be enough, he added, "I'm here. I have you."

She couldn't be sure how long they stood there. Her eyes weren't open to judge the sun's arc. But she heard the others' voices, heard the clank of a shovel as they set to work digging holes. Digging graves. For Ryota. And for the two dead humans they discovered inside his cottage, bodies ravaged, throats torn open. She didn't see these things, but she heard them. Even as Kurama held her, even as he tangled fingers in her ponytail, she heard them.

And she felt it. Oh, how she felt it. The emptiness where Ryota's Loom had once been. The gaping wound left behind in his absence.

Never before had she seen a life snuffed out. Though lives ended every day, she'd never watched one leave this world for the next plane. She'd never seen the place where a Loom once fit against the greater tapestry of life transform into a void. She'd never seen a person cease to be.

But now she had.

It ached inside her. A pinprick against her territory's vast awareness. Like an imperfection on a television screen. Impossible to unsee on the day it happened, and yet… as time went on, perhaps the sort of thing that might be forgotten about, that the mind might be able to compensate for.

Yet still there.

 _Always_ there.

* * *

AN: Y'all can thank an anonymous pal on Tumblr for convincing me to post this chapter early! (And maybe my own impatience because I've been DYING to share this since last Saturday.) There's so much in this chapter I love—getting to address Kuwabara's beloved Pinky String, Kurama's layers, and _everything_ with Ryota. All of it! I hope that love shone through!

A million bajillion thanks to everyone who reviewed this last week. A ton of new faces appeared in my inbox, and it's always a joy when this story finds new readers. To all you lovelies new and old, the hugest of thanks: knightsqueen05, Kittykatkait12, LadyEllesmere, ahyeon, shewritesfic, xenocanaan, Kristy Himura, o-dragon, WistfulSin, MissIdeophobia, xanaldy, Guest, Deanna Price, and daochan!


	20. Caught in the Hues

Itomori's train station possessed only a small waiting room, its narrow confines home to three benches, a vending machine, and a ticket window. As Yusuke and Kuwabara accosted the worker hidden in the booth, Kurama led Michi to a seat along the far wall and eased down beside her. Hiei trailed them, his focus on some faraway place, doubtless running from the wretched grief strung through his Loom in streaks of wire-sharp mauve.

On the long trek back from Ryota's cottage, Kurama had kept hold of Michi's hand—or maybe she had kept hold of his. Either way, their hands remained laced together even now, resting between them on the metal bench. His thumb stroked across her knuckles with slow, steady pressure, repeating without words the assurances he'd continued uttering since the moment Hiei's sword pierced Ryota's guts.

Now, though, silence reigned, and he let his thumb speak for him.

Yusuke and Kuwabara rejoined them minutes later, tickets in hand. There was a forced jauntiness to Yusuke's step, an over-exaggerated pep as he swept up to the windows overlooking the train platform and stared out at the tracks. "Train'll be here in ten. Not totally crappy timing, all things considered. Maybe today isn't complete shit just yet."

"Can the jokes, Urameshi," Kuwabara answered without heart. His threads hung about him like a mourning shroud, tinged with mauve sadness and magenta disappointment, his heart hurting for souls he had never even known.

Hurting because two humans were dead.

Because Ryota was dead.

 _Dead_.

She kept reliving it, an endless loop inside her mind. Not the instant when Hiei's intent changed. Not the second when he cleaved the life from Ryota's body. But the haunting, fractured moment that followed instantaneously after—the dissolution of Ryota's Loom.

The pinprick of its absence still hovered at the edge of her awareness, never coming quite into focus and yet refusing to meld out of existence either. It was but a pixel upon a vast screen, one tiny, disobedient fleck of light, a singular star gone from the constellations of the universe.

"Michi," Kurama said softly.

"Hmm."

"I recognize the futility of this advice, but to whatever extent you can, try not to dwell. Try not to let what's transpired today consume you."

She squeezed her eyes shut, blotting out the view of Yusuke as he stepped closer, his gaze darting to their joined hands, then flitting away. "Easier said than done," she murmured.

"And yet the only task that needs doing."

Clearing his throat awkwardly, Yusuke said, "We'll get you home to Mushiyori tomorrow, Michi." Her name. Not _kid_ for once. Why was that what brought fresh tears stinging to her eyes? "Thanks for being flexible."

She hadn't wanted to be. When Yusuke had announced they were done burying the dead and that it was time to truck over to Genkai's, she'd tried to find the words to argue. As long as it harbored Taki and more of those poisonous white threads, the shrine was the last place she wanted to be.

But then Kurama had informed her in that careful, coddling tone he'd adopted that Asato had come out to the compound for the weekend, and even though she was mad at him—even though she might never forgive him for volunteering her for this wretched kidnapping—the thought of seeing her cousin froze any arguments dead in her throat. Because Asato would get it. He'd get it like no one else would. Not Runa, Nanako, or Yurie, who knew nothing of her territory. Not Kurama, for all his efforts.

Still, she hadn't let them in on how desperately she needed a comforting face—because frankly, Kurama didn't truly count; not these days—and she wasn't planning to clue them in now. Instead, she stuck to the same lie she'd spun before: "Genkai will want to hear what I saw firsthand."

A beat of silence answered her. Desperate to fill it, she let her gaze rove until her eyes settled on Hiei and the hilt of the katana jutting from the back of his strange cloak. Without thinking, she asked, "Why don't people notice you're carrying around a sword?"

He turned to her. A flicker of lime surprise zagged across his tapestry of raging regret. "It's taken you all these years to ask that question?"

"I guess."

It wasn't the response he'd anticipated, it seemed, because further surprise—and a twinge of wry, cobalt amusement—spread through his threads. "Not good at paying attention, are you?"

"More like, willfully oblivious."

A bark of laughter drew her eye to Yusuke, his Loom blooming with cobalt. "You? Or him?"

She shrugged.

Hiei's lips pulled back in a snarl, his threads bleeding toward crimson as he tossed Yusuke a glare, but his frustration didn't appear aimed toward Michi. He spared Kurama a brief, indecipherable glance before returning his focus to her, then raised a hand to the white strip of cloth wrapped perpetually around his forehead. He tapped a finger directly over its center, his touch feather light. "I _make_ them unaware."

A flicker of cold woke in her belly, and Kurama's thumb ceased its gentle stroking as she asked, "Come again?"

"Human minds are easily manipulated. Weak, fragile things." He grinned, wicked as a wildfire. "All I need do is prod their thoughts back toward whatever mundane drivel occupies their lives, and they forget all about me."

For a heartbeat, Michi regretted asking, but as she drew in a fresh breath and her chest expanded, the fist that had gripped her heart in its bony clutches for weeks finally loosened. Only a degree. But a degree nonetheless.

Because this was an answer, and at least she could do _something_ with answers. Even if all that meant was asking more questions.

With sharp clarity, she flashed back to what she'd told Asato—that she was sick of juggling two lives in two different worlds. Well, maybe the path to balance wasn't, in fact, locking one world out entirely. Maybe it was learning what she could about both, on her terms, when she wanted, as much or as little as she wanted.

And maybe, despite everything, she _did_ want to.

Without crutches.

Carefully—pointedly—she retrieved her hand from Kurama's, unlacing their fingers and retreating into her own space. The moment she did, she sensed a change in him, his walls bricking back into place, whatever facsimile of Shuichi that emerged when she'd needed him returning to the place from whence it came. He remained at her side, legs crossed, ankle resting atop knee, hands laced atop ankle, but he no longer leaned toward her and a calculating appraisal had taken root in his emerald gaze that hadn't been there seconds prior.

The fox was back.

So be it.

"You use mind control," she said to Hiei.

"Hn."

"Casually? Without strain?" After all, he didn't appear as if he were exerting himself. Perhaps he hid it well. Or perhaps it was just that trivial for him. Perhaps demons were simply that unfathomably powerful.

"As I said, human minds are—"

"Oh, shut up, short stack," Kuwabara snapped, swatting a hand in Hiei's direction. Then he jabbed a finger toward his own forehead. "The shrimp got this creepy eye implanted in his head years ago. It makes that mind voodoo crap pretty easy for him—"

Hiei bristled. "The Jagan would tear you to pieces—"

Kuwabara plowed ahead as if he hadn't heard the fire demon at all. "It almost killed him when he got it, but he's a stubborn idiot, so he did it anyway. But it's not like he can just waltz into your head without a little work on his part now—and a lot of work in the past."

An eye implantation? Was that what lurked beneath Hiei's bandana?

Bizarre.

Utterly so.

And yet, for all his bluster, not even Kuwabara seemed fazed by the strangeness of what he'd just proclaimed. Third eyes. Mind control. None of that was odd to these men.

Just then, an intercom clicked on, and a voice drifted through the station as an operator announced the arrival of their train. No further talk of Hiei's unsettling powers transpired while they filed out onto the chilly platform and watched the train grind to a stop on the rails, but the revelation remained jangling in Michi's mind, set on repeat, and as they climbed aboard, she watched Kurama ahead of her, wondering—not for the first time—what secrets he was still hiding.

* * *

Genkai's stairs.

The inescapable bane of Michi's existence.

Goodness, how she hated them. And oh, but how much more she detested them while climbing with these men—these indefatigable, untiring machines. At least when she had to traverse the steps beside Asato, he was as out of breath and exhausted as she was by the time they reached the summit.

Not so with the ex-Detectives. Nevertheless, she persisted. Here was another place she wouldn't reveal weakness.

The boys were talking, Yusuke and Kuwabara ahead of her, chattering nonstop, jabbing at each with playful insults that deluged their threads in steady cobalt, and Hiei and Kurama at her back, voices pitched low. She caught only the occasional word of their conversation, but it seemed they combated the burden of Ryota's death in a manner opposite that of their jovial counterparts. Where Yusuke and Kuwabara had retreated to the comfort of superficial humor and bickering, Hiei and Kurama had chosen to wade deeper into the murk, trying to work out where they'd gone wrong—what choice they'd missed that might've averted Ryota's death.

She wished they'd stop.

After all, the solution was obvious. She should've listened to Kurama. She should've kept away from the cottage. She shouldn't have been so bull-headedly stubborn—

"Oy, you idiots!"

The shout snagged Michi's attention, and she looked up from the never-ending stairs, discovering Asato just twenty steps away, waiting at the summit. He'd planted a hand on his hip, his head cocked with arrogant pride, and she recognized the punkish, rough-edged version of her cousin honed by years of secret disobedience. "I still don't get why you took a train from Itomori," he continued. "You could have just run—" His gaze slid past Yusuke and landed on her, and though his lips kept moving for a moment, whatever he'd planned to say never made it off his vocal chords as lime surprise burst through his threads. It took a second before he found his voice again. "Michi? What the hell are you doing here?"

She startled to a halt herself. A dozen questions sprung to mind. Like why he was shocked to see her, for one thing, because surely he'd been the one to send the Detectives after her, hadn't he? But also, a sudden and overwhelming love for her cousin. Her stupid, stubborn, belligerent cousin who'd remembered to call her Michi, despite years of habit and a healthy dose of bewilderment if the lime in his Loom was anything to judge by.

Her throat closing around a sob she refused to allow escape, she trudged up the stairs as fast her beleaguered legs could manage and threw herself into his arms.

"Michi?" he asked again. "What the heck is going on?"

But she couldn't manage a response, not yet, and it was Kurama who answered instead, his voice somewhere at her back. "If I may," he said, "I'd recommend we find Genkai—and perhaps somewhere comfortable to sit. This explanation is one best given only once."

* * *

"It's time we see your territory for ourselves."

Sitting in Genkai's meditation room, shins tucked beneath her, knees bent, feet flat against her plush cushion, Michi stiffened. For an hour, she'd drifted in and out of the briefing the Detectives delivered to Genkai and Asato. A dull, aching headache had settled over her, blunting her senses and making concentration near impossible, and only an effort of stubborn tenacity had kept her in this room.

To manage it, she'd done as Genkai had instructed her to do back when she'd first been learning to control her territory—focus on a singular Loom, just one batch of threads to decipher and decode. Though her abilities remained meager even all these years later, Asato's tangle of threads had provided the refuge she needed, even as riled and anxious as it was. But now Genkai had turned all eyes her way, and whatever brief respite she'd managed to grasp evaporated between her fingers.

"Is that possible?" she asked hesitantly. "You seeing the Loom of Life?"

"It is," Genkai answered, gruff as ever. Not the type to coddle. Not even now, after Michi had witnessed a death as brutal as any she could imagine. "Provided you're willing."

"To do what, exactly?"

Genkai jerked her chin toward Hiei. He stood at the window, staring out at the snowy grounds beyond the panes, his cushion forfeited to Yusuke, who sprawled across two in an ungraceful heap. "Hiei possesses the ability to show me what I might not otherwise see."

"With his third eye."

She hadn't phrased it like a question, but Genkai nodded regardless. "Precisely." Her gaze swung across the gathered men. "In fact, I think we would all benefit from a glimpse at the Loom. Your ability to describe what you've witnessed has only gotten us so far. Clearly, it's not enough. We must save these demons before the damned bastards—"

Michi held up a hand. "Fine. That's fine. I'll show you. Or Hiei will. However this works."

Wind seemed to disband from Genkai's sails. If the navy in the old woman's threads was anything to judge by, she'd been bracing for a battle, intending to wear Michi down until she agreed to this invasion of her mind. But really, was it an invasion? She overstepped into these people's inner-workings every time she so much as approached their proximity. After such violation, could she really begrudge them the same?

And besides, even if Ryota's death had taught them nothing else, it had still bared her selfishness for all to see.

She'd left this place because she was scared, because she was fleeing what she could no longer face—because she was weak. As a result, more and more demons had lost themselves to the white threads. Genkai had been robbed of her best tool to unravel this mystery, and she'd been forced to watch as all the halfway house's precious work began to crumble.

Maybe being here wouldn't have changed that. Maybe those souls were lost either way. But if her territory could make things different—if _she_ could make things different—didn't she have to try? Could she live with herself if she didn't?

No.

Resoundingly, decidedly, inarguably no.

"Hiei would be entering the sanctity of your mind," Kurama reiterated, surveying her with a critical intensity that stoked coals to life in her belly, "and baring what he finds there to all of us." There was lime surprise in his threads, weak but recognizable, mixed with a dose of the washed-out green she'd come to know as his brand of curiosity. But there other shades, too. A pale wrinkle of amethyst affection. A nearly unrecognizable mix of pallid green and watery blue that she thought might approximate the combination of mossy anticipation and teal happiness she recognized as hope.

As if she'd caught him as off-guard as she had Genkai. As if doing so had changed how he saw her in some way. As if his understanding of her had been fundamentally altered.

As if he'd at last unearthed the answer to a question he'd been pondering for weeks.

She met his gaze directly as she answered, "I gathered as much."

Hiei turned from the window. His cloak flowed about his legs, rippling like liquid midnight. He tilted his head, looking for all the world like a bird of prey. "Done running, girl?"

She ignored him. "How will you perceive the Loom of Life? The same way I see it?"

Genkai's chin dipped in confirmation. "Hiei should be able to layer your second sight over our own. We'll experience Looms exactly as you do. To begin, I'd like to see our own."

"Then we should go outside," Michi said, pushing to her feet, pins and needles coursing through her calves at the movement.

Asato squawked, the first noise he'd made since Genkai suggested this idea. "Uh, Meech, it's freezing out there."

"I know." She tugged her sweater straight. "That's why jackets were invented."

Yusuke's attempt to muffle a laugh morphed it into a snort as Genkai asked, "What purpose does moving outdoors serve?"

"When my territory first manifested, I found it nearly impossible to separate the threads I saw from the colors of the real world. It took my mind ages to comprehend and differentiate my true vision from that of my territory." Glancing around at the Detectives, she clarified, "My ability to perceive the Loom isn't dependent on eyesight. I see it even with my eyes closed." She took a step toward the hall and the backdoor beyond. "Outside is gray and white. As blank a canvas as we'll get. It'll probably prove less overwhelming."

Yusuke scrambled upright. "Give us some credit, kid. We can handle some cutesy colors."

Her shoulders rolled into a defensive shrug, but she fought off the urge to snap back at him. "Maybe so. But better to be safe."

Grunting a gruff noise of agreement, Genkai stood, and the others followed, trailing Michi into the hall, where they shrugged into coats before carrying on out the doors. A steady wind gusted, sending icy fingers beneath Michi's layers, but she ignored it as she trudged into the snow. The drifts weren't as deep as they'd been during the blizzard six weeks prior, and an icy crust had formed atop the snow, breaking beneath each step of her boots.

Stopping in the yard's center, Michi wrapped her arms around her middle and faced Hiei. His threads glinted back at her, navy and emerald. "Ready when you are."

"Hn."

As the others circled around her, he pulled off the cloth around his forehead, revealing an actual, honest-to-goodness third eye. She had only a moment to startle at its purple—not crimson—hue before she felt it. Not Hiei's presence. Of that, she sensed nothing.

Instead, there was a sharpening of her territory, a brightening of her awareness. All her usual defenses fell away. Her careful ignorance of animal threads and the connections between Looms and the strings of the world shattered into nothingness, and she was left wincing, clenching her teeth against the crush of colors and sensation.

Around her, the others reacted, Kuwabara groaning like he'd been struck, Yusuke throwing up a useless hand to shield his eyes, Kurama sucking in a disconcerted breath. Genkai went still, muscles locking up tight, and Hiei's jaw strained, his eyes narrowing to a directionless glare.

Asato managed to speak first, hands cradled around his temples. "Hell, Michi. This is what you see all the time?"

"I…"

Yes.

Yes, it was.

This crushing wall of color. The whirlwind of emotions in dozens of sparkling shades. The Ties That Bind. The cobweb kiss of the world's threads. The tangled, inescapable snarl of everyone's Looms feeding into one another. The burning, sun-bright cores in each of their chests.

For the first time in months or even years, she realized how utterly all-encompassing her territory truly was. Even now, after practicing blocking out the peripheral details for months on end, they were still _there_. She couldn't evade them. She merely refused to dwell on them. Only, in that moment, with Hiei rooting through her mind, projecting her awareness in this manner, all those tiny, usually ignorable pieces became impossible to shut out—impossible _not_ to dwell on.

"Yes," she whispered into the silence. "This is what I see."

"No wonder you fucking hate it," Yusuke groused. He dropped into a crouch in the snow, elbows braced atop his bent knees, eyes jammed ineffectually shut. "I take back my crap about cutesy colors. This shit is _not_ cute."

"No," she agreed. "It isn't."

Watching them struggle and squint at the Loom as if peering into headlights, Michi found herself emboldened. After all, these were some of the toughest men the three worlds had to offer. Not to mention, Genkai was unceasingly in control of her own body. To see them all rendered so unnerved bolstered her in a way she'd never encountered before—because she _lived_ like this. Every day, for six endless years, she'd lived like this.

Perhaps she wasn't quite as weak as she'd imagined.

Shifting her focus to Genkai, Michi asked, "If I restrict my awareness of the Loom, will that in turn limit what you all see?"

Genkai looked to Hiei, and he hissed a short note of verification.

"Then what you're exposed to now is more than we need," Michi said. "For one thing, the threads of the world can go." Clenching and unclenching her fingers to keep her body grounded, she peeled away the cobweb like strings of the wind and trees and earth, refusing to acknowledge their slippery, translucent presence. Next, she honed in on the Looms of nearby creatures, walling them off. "Nor do we need animals."

With each layer of the Loom of Life she stifled down, her onlookers faltered less. Yusuke managed to reclaim his feet. Hiei's jaw loosened. Asato stopped clutching at his hair. With the overwhelming onslaught dampened, their Looms began to crystalize, individual threads becoming visible.

Still, she kept going. "The interactions between Looms aren't needed either. You're all overcome. Seeing the feedback loop doesn't get us any further." As she spoke, she closed out her cognizance of Hiei's agitation bleeding into the space between them, bucked off the snarls where Yusuke's bewilderment met Genkai's awe, and smoothed away Kuwabara's connections last of all, choosing not to focus on how strangely heightened they were compared to the average soul's.

Throughout, she kept her concentration carefully away from Kurama. She wasn't sure she wanted to witness the moment he pieced together the odd difference between his Loom and those of his teammates, and she certainly wasn't ready to deal with however he might react to the way she'd relied on him or whenever he realizated that her territory had been what drew them together in the first place.

Better to cling to ignorance and risk hurting him than be hurt herself.

Selfish.

But also, what she needed.

When at last only their basic Loom's remained, she licked her lips, dragged her fingers through her windswept hair, and said, "All that's left now is emotion. The one piece I've never managed to block out."

"Michi…" Asato took a step toward her, crunching through the snow, then faltered and shook his head. "I never realized."

She offered him a reassuring smile. "I know."

"No." He grabbed at her elbow and hauled her into a hug. "I'm sorry. I didn't get it."

"It's okay, Asato. It's fine. _I'm_ fine." Despite herself, she laughed. "I think I'd forgotten how dramatic it is. I'm so used to it by now. But you all experiencing it… It's like I'm seeing it for the first time again myself."

Sighing, he stepped back, but he kept hold of her arms for a second longer. His fingers squeezed as their eyes met, and then he looked down at the loose net of his Loom as ice blue pride washed through his threads—pride aimed not at himself, but at her.

Failing to stave off a grin, she asked Genkai, "So where do I start?"

"Explain what we're seeing. The colors. The bright points in our chests. I can piece together the gist, but the boys are unfamiliar. Teach them."

Michi's grin proved infectious, and despite the useless squint he couldn't seem to shake, Asato beamed at her as he smacked a palm against his chest. "You've my permission to use me as your demonstration dummy." He spread his arms wide. "What the heck do all these colors mean?"

"Well," she said, "first off, half those colors don't matter. Most people feel dozens of things at once, tiny flickers of emotion that don't mean anything worth focusing on. Could be a little irritation from an unresolved fight the day before. Or residual happiness from a promotion. Those sorts of emotions stay in a Loom for days at a time. I ignore them for the most part." She combed through his Loom, searching for prime examples. "You're always tired, for instance, and that's the gray in your threads, the shade that looks like thunderclouds."

Pausing for a breath, she discovered her audience stood riveted, each of the ex-Detectives focused on Asato's knotted Loom. Only Genkai had eyes for Michi. The force of the woman's gaze put steel in Michi's spine.

She had to get these explanations right—that was the message she found in Genkai's resolute intensity. For Ryota. For the other demons they'd lost.

For demons like Taki they'd yet to lose.

The ones they could still save.

"The useful pieces are the shifting colors," she continued, chin lofted high, "the ones that seem more transient. They're your current emotions, what you're feeling right this second." Picking through Asato's threads, she started highlighting what she found valuable. "Lime means surprise. Emerald is curiosity. Mixed as they are in your Loom now, I'd say you're fascinated or in awe. But the goldenrod is discomfort, the mustard anxiety. Side effects, I'd imagine, of viewing threads for the first time." Sheepish silver twisted into being, and she laughed as she said, "Silver signifies embarrassment."

Asato frowned as further silver spilled across his Loom, his nose crinkling. "Well, that's… unflattering."

Michi stifled another grin. "You're embarrassed of being embarrassed? Seems a bit recursive, dear cousin."

He flipped her the bird. With it came not crimson annoyance, but cobalt amusement and a stain of lavender affection. She identified each in turn, then let her attention swing wider, encompassing Genkai and the Spirit Detectives, though remaining well clear of Kurama. His pale threads waited at the edge of her vision, calling to her, begging to be examined, but she refused.

Instead, she vocalized what she saw in the others' Looms, pointing out any colors that differed from what she'd already identified in Asato's. Mint suspicion in Hiei's threads—distrust of that which he did not yet understand. Navy determination playing across Genkai's hollow cheeks—her resolve to withstand the onslaught of Michi's territory written as deeply into her bones as it was her threads. Mossy anticipation woven through Yusuke's tapestry in ever broader strokes—impatience at Michi's slow, deliberate teachings. The pinks and mauves that signified the grief haunting each of them over Ryota's death.

Then, last but far from least, the Ties That Bind.

Only then, once she'd exhausted every example other than those she might find in Kurama's Loom, did she move on.

Time to explain the last piece they'd need to understand what they would see in Taki. "The bright knots in your chests are your cores. Your emotional centers. In some respects, a core is like your baseline, the place from which all your other emotions develop. It's comprised of what you feel most deeply, of the emotions that inform your decisions and shape your character. Cores don't change. Not perceivably anyway. Maybe they do over lifespans, but not in days or weeks or even years." A gust of wind burst through the clearing, sharp and biting. Shivering, she withdrew her hands inside her sleeves. "Except, that's not true of the demons with the white threads. Their cores are changing. Bleaching white."

Genkai crossed her arms atop her chest. "Are those the only ways they differ from us? White threads and cores?"

"Not just that. They're… angry. But it's not traditional anger. It's… hard to explain without showing you." Biting her inner cheek, she scanned their Looms, searching for a trace of black to point out, ignoring the growing pain in her skull. Now wasn't the time for a migraine. She wouldn't succumb to one. Not yet.

Her search turned up not even a flicker of black.

Which meant she had to get creative.

"Asato?"

"Yeah?"

"Remember in tenth year, that weekend you attended a party in Sarayashiki?"

Uncertainty rippled through his threads in strokes of mint suspicion. "Of course I do. Father found out somehow and grounded me for weeks—"

"I told him."

Michi had planned on further explanations. In light of her territory's overload of stimulation and Asato's continued squinting, she'd imagined she might need to drive the blow home deep to get a rise out of him. She'd figured on weaving quite the tale to garner his attention properly.

She'd been wrong.

Black dark as tar flooded his Loom like an oil spill.

Exactly the anger she'd wanted.

"Are you serious, Michi? What the hell? I spent the rest of the year paying for that damn party. Why would you—"

"I didn't really rat you out," she said quickly, holding up a hand to stopper his rant. "I have no idea how Uncle found out."

"Then why—"

She hushed him with a raised finger. "The black in your Loom is what regular anger looks like. You can still see other emotions through it. Lime, mustard. It doesn't consume everything. But that's not how Taki's threads appeared last time I was here. His Loom was entirely black and white, and his core was little better."

Slowly—deliberately—Genkai nodded, no doubt locking the sight of Asato's rage inside the steel trap of her mind. Then she switched her focus to the boys, taking a step through the snow in Yusuke's direction. "Any questions, dimwit?" Her gaze swung wider. "Any of you?"

Kuwabara's hand shot into the air. "If Michi's territory does all this, why can't I sense it at all?" He jabbed a thumb toward Asato. "I feel it when he opens his territory, so why not Michi's?"

Genkai chuckled, the sound like grinding gravel. "What we're seeing is not Michi's territory. The Loom of Life exists separate from any mere psychic's trivial powers. If I were to hazard a guess on its exact workings, I'd say Michi's territory doesn't extend beyond her own body—perhaps not even beyond her eyes. We don't sense it, because we've not stepped within it."

"Logical," Kurama said, off to Michi's left. He remained out of view, nothing but a red blur at the edge of her peripheral vision. "Such a simple explanation. My inability to form as useful a theory was proving perplexing, I'll admit."

Theories.

About her.

Like she was a puzzle he was still trying to work out. Even though they hadn't seen each other in weeks. Even though she'd told him she was leaving his life for good. Maybe she'd only stayed in this thoughts because of this case. Maybe any contemplation he'd directed her way arose purely because the white threads were the single clue they had to work with.

But the heat of his gaze upon her made those maybes seem rather obtuse.

Or perhaps there was no heat. Perhaps that was just the ache in her chest speaking. Sometimes, it was hard to say. Where did rationale, reserved Michi end and heartbroken, grieving Michi begin?

"Anything else?" Genkai barked. "Questions, any of you?"

A seemingly general prodding. As if Genkai were irritated with their reticence to speak up. Only, there was no flare of crimson annoyance in her threads to corroborate that explanation—and it wasn't hard to see why.

Though Genkai had pitched her accusation at the group at large, she had interest in only one of their answers. Her focus was laser bright on Kurama, cutting into him with a wicked curiosity that shone emerald in her Loom. The others, too, had concentrated on him, staring where Michi herself had not looked all this time.

But she couldn't resist any longer.

He stood five feet to her left, strands of hair dancing on the icy breeze, his hands slipped neatly within the pockets of his jacket. With pointed calm, he ignored the attention leveled his way, and he gave no indication of further intent to speak—not with his lips, anyway. Yet the question was there. Shining in the viridian depths of his eyes. _Why were his threads different?_ And, more meaningfully still, a second query, one built from flickering, guarded hurt: _Why was this the first moment Michi had acknowledged him?_

When the silence held, Genkai snorted, rolled her eyes, and stomped for the temple. "On to Taki then. Time to see these white threads for myself."

* * *

AN: For ages now, I've been waiting to reveal why Kurama and the others hadn't sense Michi's territory. I hope Genkai's explanation strikes y'all as solid. The boys don't sense Michi's territory because she doesn't manifest it around herself; it's just always active within her eyes themselves, thereby enabling to view the Loom of Life. There's nothing to step inside of, and therefore nothing to sense.

Not sure how many of you will be interested (and some of you may have already seen it), but I posted a new story on Friday, titled 'The Unknown Grounds.' It's a YusukexOC fic, and I'm planning to update it biweekly, every other Friday. If you're interested, give it a peek! BbL will still be my main focus, but I'm super hype about TUG, and I can't wait to share it with y'all.

This is being posted at such a weird hour because my favorite YouTubers and Twitch streamers are doing a 48 hour charity marathon this weekend (Google the Mindcrack Marathon if you're interested). Lots of shenanigans, lots of good souls doing great work for charity. Three and a half hours in, they've already raised $60K!

And now that's enough spiels from me. The response to last chapter was phenomenal. Thank you all for being such wonderful peeps. You make sharing this story every Saturday the absolute highlight of my week. ENDLESS love to all these fabulous folks: MissIdeophobia, shewritesfic, o-dragon, anonymous pal, xanaldy, xenocanaan, ahyeon, LadyEllesmere, knightsqueen05, Guest, xXGemini14Xx, WistfulSin, Crackles McKraken, daochan, and Guest.


	21. From the Dark

Viewing Taki's Loom proved something of a production.

The demon hunkered atop his bed, tucked within the dark shadows of his room, his curtains drawn tight against the last hazy rays of sunlight. As Michi opened his door, he remained unmoving, as unyielding and unresponsive as the stone that covered his skin, and though Genkai had warned her of how sullen and remote he'd become, the uncanny stillness of his massive frame still sent chills down Michi's spine.

What followed was a near silent affair. She stayed in the doorway, crumbling beneath a headache that tore into her temples and set her nerves aflame. One by one, the others joined her, peering in at Taki like he was some animal in a zoo exhibit. She lost track of who stood at her side, the whisper of their footsteps becoming a roar in her ears as she sagged against the doorframe.

Too many hours spent focused on the Loom of Life had caught up to her, and this second exposure to the insidious white threads was nearly enough to bring her to her knees. Yet she couldn't look away. Taki's Loom called to her, that mass of writhing white and seething black sinking like hooks through her awareness, keeping her captive even as her fellow observers rotated in and out.

And then it happened.

One of the threads began to ravel, twisting tighter and tighter. It formed a coil tight as a spring, and she knew what was coming. She'd seen this before.

Heedlessly, she grabbed at the person beside her, her fingers closing around a narrow wrist. At once, she realized what she'd done—who that wrist belonged to—but it didn't matter. She needed someone else to see what was happening.

And really, other than Genkai, was there a better witness than Kurama?

"Michi?" he whispered, voice little more than breath of wind.

Unable to muster words, she raised a finger, pointing toward the thread as it began to fray. Desperate, she prayed he'd be able to spot it. Unaccustomed to Looms as he was, Taki's knotted tapestry was probably unintelligible, but the thread was moving, the only fluid string in a sea of monochrome stillness, and if he could just see that, if he could—

The thread frayed.

Its filaments snapped in two.

Then it faded from sight.

At her side, Kurama remained motionless. Nothing in him had changed. None of the horror that gripped her had risen in his Loom. Which meant he hadn't seen. He hadn't—

This time, it was he who pointed. "There's another."

And there was. A fresh thread had begun to tighten, twining into a coil. Quickly, Kurama yielded his viewpoint to Genkai, and she observed beside Michi as that white thread performed its death spiral, then ceased to be.

More threads followed. Nearly a dozen by the time Taki's Loom fell still. Enough for each of the boys to watch, even green-faced Kuwabara, reduced to tatters by the Loom of Life, just as he had been outside Ryota's cottage. Enough for Kurama to slip back into the doorway and press a steadying hand against the small of her back. Enough for tears to begin slipping down her cheeks in silent tracts.

Her eyes ached from too much crying. Her head pounded with an unshakeable rhythm. Her body hummed with exhaustion.

But most of all, her soul hurt—for Taki.

As they disbanded, Hiei ceased projecting her territory onto the others. She didn't feel the change, but she saw it in them, in the way Asato at last stopped squinting and in the way Kuwabara stood a little straighter. Even still, she couldn't be sure if the Loom of Life had pained them as it did her.

At least, not until Yusuke voiced his ire. "I feel like I just took a thousand punches straight to the skull," he whined, shoving a hand through his gelled hair, mussing it up. "And not some weak ass punches. This ain't some Kuwabara shit. I'm talking final-round-of-the-Demon-World-Tournament level punches."

Instantly, Kuwabara howled with indignation, lobbing one of his insulted fists Yusuke's way. A scuffle ensued, one Michi steered well clear of.

"I imagine you'd like some wards," Genkai asked over her shoulder as she led the rest of them off down the hall.

Michi nodded. No sense trying to disguise her pain. Lies got her nowhere. Better to simply own her vulnerability. "Some dark, warded quiet would go a long way toward making me useful."

"Good. We're going to need you."

By the time they reached the kitchen, Hiei had melted off, gone without a word. Which left only Genkai, Asato, and Kurama. An odd mix of company, if nothing else.

As Genkai strode for a drawer and produced a stack of parchment from its innards, Kurama said, "I noticed we couldn't see your Loom." His question went unsaid, but Michi could sleuth out the gist of it easily enough.

She propped herself against the counter, letting its steady strength keep her standing. Trying to address Kurama directly made her throat close up tight, and she stared down at her hands as she combed for words. Ultimately, she settled on bare bone facts, the same ones she'd used to explain a dozen times before, to other psychics like Yana and Kaito. "I've never been able to see my threads. According to Genkai's research, it's not unusual for psychics who can read the Loom."

He hummed a note of understanding, but said no more. Still not raising the question of his own Loom, then? Strange. If not for her raging headache, she might've been nervous—terrified of the moment that hammer would at last drop—but now she was too exhausted, too worn down to do anything more than note the question's absence.

Sweeping back into the hall, parchment in hand, Genkai barked, "Wait here. The warding energy has seeped from the last set I made. I'll need to paint you a new batch." With that, she disappeared, gone before Michi could even answer.

Asato stared in his mentor's wake for a moment, then dragged a hand down his face. "Look, Meech, I know you probably don't think now is the best time, but I'm going to scram and give you two a chance to talk. Kurama's been patient enough, I'd say."

As soon as the words were out, Asato beat a fast retreat, slipping from the room too quickly for Michi to summon a protest. It rose on her tongue too late, dozens of desperate reasons why Asato couldn't leave jumbling together in a useless crush. Then she was swallowing, stammering for breath as her gaze swung up to her remaining companion.

She was alone—with him. With Kurama.

He offered her a bemused smile. A softness had returned to his features, tentative but recognizable. If he stood in this kitchen with anyone else, he might've tricked them into believing his projected calm. Physically, it manifested in all the right ways. That jaunty upturn at the corner of his lips. The laugh lines webbing around his eyes. The easy grace in his long limbs. But while Kurama may have been a master of his body, he could no more easily dictate his Loom than any other soul—and Michi didn't miss the faint yellow stained across his threads in rotting discomfort.

He was nervous.

It almost made her laugh.

"Your cousin can make quite the exit," he said lightly, leveraging his voice as yet another tool to craft his mirage of composure.

She made no attempt to rival his control. No sense making a fool of herself. "I know you must want to ask. About your Loom. Just do it." She squeezed her eyes shut. "Please."

The whisper of shifting cloth announced his movement, but to her surprise, he didn't draw closer. "Perhaps not here," he said and—startling her further still—the semblance of easy-going poise he'd projected moments before fell away. When she cracked her eyes open, she discovered him in the hallway, waiting, so motionless he seemed to not even breathe. Bracing for the worst, yet hoping for the best—or so the jumble of his Loom's pale colors suggested. "Come with me?"

She swallowed raggedly. "Where to?"

"Somewhere private."

 _No._

It rose on her tongue. A swift rebuff. The urge to push him away as briskly as he had distanced himself from her that morning.

But then she spotted tendrils of amethyst playing through his threads, trailing across his cheeks, tumbling down his arms, bundling around the fists clenched at his sides. His façade had cracked, any attempts to hide his jittery nerves now crumbled away to dust. Here at last stood a version of him she could recognize as human—or human-like.

In light of the fading hope in his eyes, she couldn't bring herself to refuse.

Instead, she pushed away from the counter, one hand held out to maintain her balance as her headache throttled to new heights. "Somewhere dark," she said. "Private, if that's what you need. But dark, too."

His smile was so very, very faint. "Thank you, Michi."

* * *

'Somewhere' revealed itself to be his room, though she didn't place it immediately.

She'd crossed the threshold and strode three steps into the gloom before her foggy, exhausted mind managed to make the connection. Then she froze, hesitating as Kurama slid the door closed and traversed to the window, pulling the curtain firmly shut, eliminating the faint light that had illuminated the space.

But its contents were already seared into Michi's memory.

In all their months of dating, she'd never seen his bedroom in Mushiyori. Now, she realized that must have been intentional, a precaution against her discovering what he truly was, but back then, she'd simply thought him private or eager to keep her away from his roommates. She'd imagined that Yusuke and the mysterious Kuwabara were messy, stereotypical guys and Shuichi had wanted to spare her their disastrous living conditions.

How strange it was, though, to be standing here now. Broken up. More like strangers than they'd been even on the day they'd first met, when he'd been a nameless young man on her train. At least then he'd been human—or so she'd believed. He wasn't human now. Never truly had been. Yet here she was. In his inner sanctuary. In a place he'd kept from her for months.

Perhaps that was why every detail registered so clearly in her mind.

When it no longer mattered, when it was too late to make a difference, he'd at last let her in. How wretchedly painful.

Dully, her fingers tangling absently in her cable knit sweater, she replayed it again, that glimpse of his room she'd garnered before he granted the darkness she'd requested. His futon, neatly made, blankets smoothed to creaseless perfection. A duffle bag tucked at the foot of the bed's frame, half-obscured beneath the fall of the duvet. To the right, a closet, one door ajar, revealing shirts and jackets dangling on hangers, proof of his presence in this temple. A potted plant upon the windowsill, long stems reaching skyward, unbloomed flowers heavy on the fronds. Books upon an old desk, each in various stages of use, their spines cracked open, baring their innards to the world.

It felt so… _him_.

The thought ached in her chest. Truly, did she even know him? Could she possibly say what _felt_ like him when she was so unsure she'd ever understood him at all?

"Apologies," he said, turning from the window, "if bringing you here seems presumptuous. I promise I don't have any ill intentions, but there are few other places in the shrine where I can be confident in our seclusion."

"It's fine. I get it."

And she did.

She'd have given just about anything to do this in _her_ room. Even if that room was only the one here, in the temple, rather than the bedroom in her Mushiyori apartment. Home turf was a comforting advantage. One she wished she had.

Wryly, she wondered how long this room had been his, how thoroughly this battleground belonged to him. Years ago, when she'd first come here, was it already his haven? Had his shirts hung in the closet? Had his books adorned the desk?

How close had she come to seeing him in those days?

Just how long, exactly, had their lives been woven so closely together, stitches in the same cloth, held separate by little more than luck of the needle's pull?

He cleared his throat gently, a careful warning that he was about to speak—treating her as if she were a timid creature on the verge of flight. "I hope your headache isn't too troubling. I'm sure you'd rather be elsewhere—"

She held up a hand to stop him. "Can we not?"

He arched a brow in silent askance.

"The games. The circles. The vague, polite distance." She shook her head, a hollow laugh clogging up her throat. It took painful seconds to wrest control of her tongue once more. "Drop the riddles, Kurama. Ask what you need to ask. Say what you need to say. But do it without the circus act."

To her utter surprise, the bloom of answering color in his threads wasn't crimson. Nor was it black.

It was lavender. Pure and true.

Affection.

"Sorry, Michi," he said, slipping his hands into his pockets and leaning back against the windowsill. "I'm afraid I haven't adjusted to the idea that you have a broader sense of emotions than most. It's… unsettling."

"Because you're used to hiding whatever you please."

It wasn't really a question, but he nodded regardless. "More or less."

"Why?"

He paused a moment, studying her for a beat before his gaze roved to the books open upon his desk. While he deliberated, a fresh wave of exhaustion rolled over her, and she crossed to his futon without seeking permission. The comforter gathered around her as she sank onto the mattress. She drew her knees to her chest and rested her forehead atop them, closing her eyes and letting the relative darkness envelop her.

"You've asked for honesty," he said, and as he spoke, his voice shifted, clueing her in to his near silent movement. She didn't lift her head, but she could track his Loom anyway, and she knew he'd gone to the desk. Paper fluttered, the spine of a book creaking as he added, "To that end, I confess I'm anxious for a few answers of my own."

She huffed a breath out through her nose. "Are you under the impression you've given me some vast wealth of knowledge? It's not as though you've told me anything of yourself." Never mind that she'd never given him the opportunity.

"And yet, I think we're both better served if you answer my questions."

Frustration welled in her, but the exhaustion gathering in her muscles proved a greater motivator, and she only sighed. She didn't have a fight in her now.

So be it.

"Then ask."

"Why were the colors of my Loom different than those of the others?"

"I don't know."

The pages ceased their whispers. "Michi, you're the one who asked for no more games—or have you already forgotten? I'll do you that kindness, but I ask that you allow me the same courtesy."

"I'm not playing coy." With effort, she tipped back her head, seeking him out through the gloom. Emerald hardness glinted back at her, and she wondered if those eyes were capable of reading even in the dark. Had the shifting pages been a ploy to unnerve her? Or had he truly been skimming the book cradled in his palm? "I don't know why your Loom is different," she continued. "Genkai wanted me to study you, to turn you into an experiment, but I…" She shook her head. "I should start at the beginning."

He splayed the palm of his free hand. "Please do."

She sucked in a breath as heavy as any she'd ever taken, willing her headache to leave her be, permitting herself the weakness of retreating into Kurama's muted Loom. It soothed like a balm, quieting the pounding in her temples.

Where to begin?

"By now, I hope it's perfectly clear I had no idea who you were. Right up until that moment you walked into the party, I hadn't even an inkling." She pressed the pads of her fingers to her eyes, unable to look at him as she admitted this truth. "I was stubborn and willful, and for years, I've refused to let Asato tell me a word about the friends he's made in these other worlds. He tried. Endlessly. But I wouldn't listen. So maybe it's my fault that I didn't recognize you when I sat down next to you on that train. Maybe if I'd let Asato tell me about the Spirit Detectives he admired so much, I would've known who you were." Her laugh sounded jagged and broken even to her own ears. "Too bad maybes get me nowhere."

Sliding her hands up into her hair, she dug her fingers deep into her ponytail, pulling strands loose as she did. "In any event, I didn't even notice your Loom until I'd already sat down. The subway is… challenging. If I had a better means home, I'd never enter those tunnels again. So yeah, I was distracted at first, but once I started paying attention—well, I was fascinated. And captivated. At first, I told myself I talked to you because I needed to understand why your Loom was different, but very quickly getting to know you had nothing to do with your threads." And everything to do with him. But she refused to say that. No doubt he knew it already. No need, then, to humiliate herself further.

"I put off telling Genkai, because I knew what she'd want me to do. To study you. To work out _why_ you are the way you are." A tremble shuddered through her, portending tears she couldn't allow to fall. Blinking them back, she carried on. "Your Loom… It's a boon, so exquisitely _dull_. With you, my headaches grew scarcer. With you, sometimes I could almost pretend I didn't see your threads at all. Perhaps it was my stubborn streak rearing its head again, but I didn't want to give that simplicity up, and I feared trying to work out your secrets would ruin the only reprieve I'd ever discovered."

Through all her rambles, he'd remained still as stone, and that didn't change as she finished with: "So truly, I don't know why your Loom is different. By all rights, I should. But as you'll quickly learn, I'm a junk psychic, Kurama, and this is just the first bit of proof."

For another perilous heartbeat, he said nothing. In the darkness, she couldn't read his expression, and the pale tumble of his threads could've meant anything depending on context. The yellows of disquiet. The faint emerald of his curiosity.

It wasn't until he spoke that she recognized the stain of chartreuse hurt woven beneath the rest.

"Is that all I was, then? An escape from your territory?"

She tried to laugh.

She suspected it emerged more like a strangled sob.

"Of course not. Goodness, you can't possibly think that." Her heart beat a broken rhythm against her breastbone. "I was falling—" _in love with you._

She caught the words before they tumbled forth, but the damage had been done. Kurama was no fool. He knew her meaning, and there was no taking the truth back now. It was there for all to see, her ragged heart bared before him.

Maybe that was why she kept talking. After all, did she even have secrets left worth keeping?

"I intended to tell you," she whispered. "We'd planned to spend a day together. The Wednesday after my semester ended. I was going to come clean then. About all of it. And I mean, I was scared. Hell, I was terrified, Shui—" This time, there was no denying the sob that escaped her lips. "But I was going to do it. As it was, I'd nearly told you the morning after you stayed at my apartment. If not for your quick departure, I would have. Little did I know, you were off to help facilitate Dai's deportation."

The chartreuse in his Loom had spread, fissuring outward in ever-widening streaks. Mauve wove between those pained threads, sorrow spilling like blood. "I shouldn't have kept you unaware for so long—"

"No, you shouldn't have."

"—I could've spared us both so much trouble."

Could he have? If she'd known what he was, would any of this have proceeded differently? She'd been so concerned with how an ordinary human might perceive the truth of her territory, but even in all the weeks since she'd learned who—or what—Kurama was, she'd yet to think what she might have made of him. Could she have dated a demon?

She wasn't so sure.

With a creaking of old paper, Kurama shut the book he still clutched, then slid it back atop his desk. He drew closer slowly, moving with practiced grace, again acting as one might when approaching a skittish animal. "I have a theory. About my Loom, that is. If you'd like to hear it…"

An open-ended offering. The chance to leave now, if that were what she wanted.

Swallowing around the knot in her throat, Michi said, "Well, don't leave me in the dark."

He chuckled lowly, lofting a brow in acknowledgement of the darkness all around them, but he said nothing of the break in her voice, and for that she was ever thankful. Even grateful enough not to stiffen as he sat beside her on the mattress. One small favor in return for another.

"Has my true nature been explained to you?"

She shook her head. "Please refer to my earlier statement. Stubborn and willful, remember?" But no sooner had the joke left her lips than did she remember the night of that wretched party, and the faltering conversation Kaito had attempted. He'd enlightened her, however unclearly, on the truth of Kurama's origin. "Or actually, that's not true. Kaito mentioned something, though I'm not sure I understood it."

At the mention of Kaito, Kurama's gaze grew shuttered, shadowed by annoyance that darkened his threads with watery crimson. "I'm surprised," he said tightly, and Michi got the distinct impression he was speaking through gritted teeth. "It's unlike Kaito to meddle."

Well. She suspected it was equally unlike Kurama to date girls Kaito had struck out with quite so disastrously. But now didn't seem the time for that backstory to emerge.

Luckily, Kurama appeared less concerned with the whys of Kaito's interference than with the hows. "What did he tell you, precisely?"

She summoned up the words Kaito had used. It wasn't hard. That sort of statement wasn't one a person forgot readily. "He said you're a demon soul tucked within a human body. That you use this form like a vessel."

He huffed a beleaguered laugh, sounding for all the world as if he suddenly felt as exhausted as she felt. "A rudimentary explanation at best, but perhaps sufficient enough for our purpose."

"Uh, no. It's not."

In the dim light, she couldn't quite be sure, but she thought his eyes widened fractionally, surprise sharpening his elegant features, bringing the fox to the surface.

She plowed ahead before he could voice a question. Why bother waiting when she could surmise what he might ask? "I can't pretend I'm not part of this anymore. Spirit World. Demon World. Psychics. Apparitions. The lot of it has burrowed into my life, and it's not going anywhere. Blocking my ears and screwing my eyes shut has proven a thorough and complete mistake, and I don't like repeating my blunders. So I want to understand. All of it. Including whatever the heck it means to be what you are. 'Sufficient' isn't going to cut it."

"Then can I surmise Genkai was right the day you last left the shrine?" he asked. He wasn't looking at her, his gaze instead focused on his long, slender fingers. They dangled between his raised knees, his elbows braced atop his kneecaps. One by one, he laced his fingers together, then unwound them, then laced them again. It was, she thought, the most trivially nervous gesture she'd ever witnessed him perform. "You are not, as she put it, staying gone?"

"No, it seems I'm not."

No matter what she'd thought she'd wanted even as recently as that very morning, she knew now that she couldn't up and leave. Not after Ryota. Not when he'd died because of her negligence. Ryota had been _her_ charge, _her_ transplant. She should've been there to check in on him. He shouldn't have been left in Itomori for weeks on end, no contact with the halfway house offered to keep him on kilter. He should've had her to watch over him.

And now, with endless white consuming Taki's Loom, she wouldn't abandon him as she had Ryota. For her transplants, if nothing else, this fight had become hers, too. It couldn't be left to the Detectives alone. Not anymore.

His fingers still weaving their intricate dance, Kurama said, "Then a proper explanation is owed. I'll keep it bare boned. I imagine you're tired. This day has been… trying, for lack of a better word, and I don't want to keep you from rest."

"Stop being evasive," she interjected softly, no heat in her tone. She wasn't frustrated with him, simply impatient, and her tolerance for his preoccupied hedging had run dry. "Out with it, please."

His hands ceased their fidgeting.

"Kaito's explanation is apt enough. The nature of my soul is, in fact, largely demonic. Many years ago, I was a bandit in Demon World, rather notorious for my skillset. Eventually, however, I ran afoul of a more talented foe and found myself mortally wounded." He paused, and she could feel his eyes on her in the dark, trying to gauge her reaction, but she kept her face schooled to expressionless calm, and sighing, he continued, "I fled to this world and managed to imbed my soul within the body of an unborn infant—a boy who would become Shuichi Minamino. Over the years, the souls of the demon I was and the human I inhabited wove themselves into one. There is no seam between the spirit of Yoko Kurama—my demon name—and Shuichi. They are one in the same. It's in that respect that I might quibble with Kaito's description. This body is no mere vessel; it's my home, the only body I wish to have, for as long as it can sustain me."

Which was to say, it _was_ a vessel. This body was a vehicle. One he'd hijacked. And someday, when it ran its course, he may very well leave it to hijack another.

She worried her teeth across her bottom lip, pulling free a strip of loose skin. The tender flesh beneath stung instantly, and she raised an absent finger, pressing its pad over the wound. "And this plays into your Loom's odd colors, how?"

Cherry red frustration, a cousin of the more traditional crimson, pulsed at the edge of her vision, a sign that her reaction had not been what he'd planned for. Even still, none of Kurama's temper wormed its way into his words as he answered, "This is no more than a theory, of course, but I'd imagine the union of my spirits may have disrupted the connection either was intended to form with the Loom of Life. I'm both Shuichi Minamino and Yoko Kurama, but in a sense, I'm also neither of them. Perhaps it's that discrepancy that causes whatever oddities you observe."

Neither and both.

Not singularly human. Nor entirely demon. Instead, he was an amalgamation, some impossible in-between that had broken even the Loom of Life's intelligent weave.

"It's plausible," she said once the silence grew too loud. It seemed he'd said his piece and planned to yield no more ground until he'd gained some measure of her response. "Genkai would probably be able to verify more readily than I can."

"I doubt a complete understanding will prove necessary. Suffice to say, it's nigh impossible you'll ever meet another individual in my particular state of being."

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

At this point, she doubted anything was _truly_ impossible.

Twisting her fingers into the hem of her sweater, she whispered, "You know, when psychics started acting out in the fall, their powers getting away from them, I worried that you might be a sign my territory was malfunctioning, too. Between your Loom and the white threads I'd begun to observe in Taki, I thought maybe my territory was breaking down."

Demonstrating yet again that he was far shrewder than she'd given him credit for, Kurama didn't miss a beat before asking, "Are you disappointed that didn't prove to be the case?"

She winced, but she didn't bother withholding the truth. "I was. Maybe I still would be, if the white threads had truly been nothing but my own powers failing. As it is, it seems your team is in need of my territory, and since I can't very well hand it off to someone else, it's continued existence is an evil I can grudgingly accept."

He chuckled softly. "Because you care about Taki." A statement more than a question.

She ducked her chin sharply. "Of course I do. He's my friend."

"Even though he's a demon."

"Whether he's demon or human is irrelevant—"

Oh.

Well, damn.

Shrewd, indeed.

No. More than that. Far, far more than just that.

Kurama was cunning. Sly. Wickedly intelligent. Calculating and observant to a degree she'd never encountered before. Not even Genkai's sharp wit matched the trap he'd just so cleanly laid for her. In a little more than a dozen words, he'd stalked her into a corner and hemmed her in with neat, effortless ease. Then, like a fox invading a rabbit's den, he'd snuck in beside her, and now she was not just trapped, but pinned beneath his paws, utterly defenseless.

Or so the washed-out navy and faded, mossy green in his Loom declared. Determined. Expectant. Counting on victory before it had been delivered.

In that, he was wrong.

Not even a harmless rabbit was entirely without weapons. Hers might not be powerful back legs, but she could lash out all the same.

"Come clean," she said. "Did you ever plan to reveal the truth? Or were you going to sit on it indefinitely? Had Asato not dragged me to that party, what was your plan? And," she added with biting tenacity, "if I'd told you about myself, would you've even returned the favor?"

His answer emerged clipped and terse, more cherry red spilling through his threads. At long last, it seemed she'd broken past his veneer of placid restraint—and oh, how she relished it.

"The matter isn't nearly as simple as you're depicting it to be."

"Liar."

He bristled, hackles practically rising. "Michi, I'm growing weary of you putting words in my mouth, of you painting me with your own perception without paying mind to that which you don't yet comprehend."

"Oh, is that so?" Squeezing her eyes shut, she spat a laugh like one might toss a shuriken. "You don't enjoy the assumptions I've made on your behalf? I can't possibly imagine how that might feel."

Because what he'd tried to imply before had been wrong. Caring about Taki, being friends with Taki—that was nothing like dating a man who was neither demon nor human. And it was certainly no comparison to making room in her heart for a man who'd deceived her for months on end.

"I wanted to make sense of what you might know," Kurama said tightly, reining his irritation back in, a bolt of navy driving back the cherry red in his Loom. "Revealing myself carried risks I wasn't comfortable making until I understood what sort of game you might be playing."

"Never mind that I wasn't playing any game at all."

He sighed. "Michi, please. I'll answer your questions, but I ask that you spare me your combativeness."

Spare him?

He couldn't be serious. He couldn't possibly—

"The night Yusuke informed me about you," he said, "I considered a dozen recourses. Ending our fledgling relationship occurred to me first. It struck me that the odds of our chance meeting were too astronomically low to truly have been chance at all, and if I was right, I wasn't sure further entanglement was worth risking. Yet each time I made to call you and put an end to the matter, I found myself unable. Instead, I asked for another night together." He shook his head, lips pressing thin as he did so. "That, I assure you, hadn't numbered amongst any of my possible plans."

She remembered the wry, flirtatious text he'd sent. Like a fool, she'd been dreading the exact break up he'd come so close to delivering—though like an even bigger idiot, she hadn't dreamed of the reasons why he'd have gone through with it.

Instead, they'd gone to the botanical gardens.

Instead, he'd kissed her for the first time.

But the moment before that kiss was seared into her memory. He'd been lost to a thought she couldn't begin to name. Once his lips found hers, she'd allowed herself to believe he'd been caught up in nerves, debating the merit of a kiss. In truth, she suspected his debate had been of a far different nature.

As if he read her thoughts, he said, "I nearly reconsidered my choice at the gardens, though my reasons differed that night. I worried if I continued seeing you, my judgment on the matter might grow clouded." He shifted his weight, and the mattress dipped, sliding her infinitesimally closer to him as the blankets rumpled between them. "But yet again, you proved to be a curiosity I couldn't let go of. Perhaps in that, we're not so different. After that night in the gardens, I dug deeper. Questioned Hiei. Determined he knew little more than Yusuke or I. Then stalled in my investigation."

Oh so carefully, he reached for her, and his hand found hers in the dark, pulling it toward him, his scarred fingers tracing across her knuckles. "How's your headache?" he murmured.

The question startled her until she realized where they'd arrived in his narrative, in the timeline of their relationship. "Bearable. For now." For the first time since he'd begun his explanations, she met his gaze square on. "Your Loom has that effect."

His smile didn't quite ease the regret in his eyes. "Had I known the Loom of Life causes your migraines, I wouldn't have insisted upon coming to your aid and forcing threads on you. Nor would I have bothered with useless medications. Thank you for humoring my efforts."

"Thank _you_ for trying. It meant more than you know."

His thumb slowed atop her knuckles. "When I discovered the seal on your door, I thought you might reveal the truth. I didn't understand its purpose precisely, but I knew what it was, and I imagined discovering it might be enough to summon a confession. Though reasonably, I should've known you weren't in any shape for dramatic reveals that night." The caress of his fingertip abated entirely. "I'd like, also, to apologize for other test I delivered to you that night."

Her brows drew together.

A test?

"Unclear as I was on the nature of your territory, I thought an assessment of your awareness was in order, and when you didn't react to a manipulation of my energy, I wanted to gauge your physical skills, if any existed."

And then it clicked.

He'd grabbed her ankle the night he'd come to help with her headache. Then, he'd passed it off like he'd merely misjudged his own strength, but that had been yet another act. One more piece in the puzzle he'd withheld. A test, as he put it.

Swallowing a ragged sigh, she smoothed her free hand over the top of his, and for a heartbeat, then two, then three, they remained still and quiet, hands interwoven. The knit of his Loom fell over her, washing across her forearms in a muddle of softened hues—blues and purples and yellows that she wished not to name. But as the silence stretched, she drew back, rose to her knees, and splayed one hand against the mattress, guiding herself upright.

Ignoring the sputtering death of the blues and purples in his threads, she stepped away from the bed and crossed to the window. His potted plant greeted her, its graceful stalk and unopened buds swaying slightly in answer to the air her arrival displaced. "Was that the end of your tests?"

"Yes."

"Were you satisfied with what you'd found?"

"Not in a conventional sense." The truth, plain and clear. "But I'd learned enough, and I didn't want to upset the balance between us."

"So that was the end, then? _You_ had the answers you wanted, and that was adequate, my own lack of knowledge notwithstanding?"

"My decisions were selfish. I've not denied that, Michi—"

"You said you trusted me," she interrupted. "But that must not have been true, because if you had, if you _truly_ had, you wouldn't have kept so many secrets. You'd have shared them with me. You'd have _entrusted_ them to me."

"I acted in error—"

"I'm sorry," she said, "but I can't accept that. You want me to. Clearly, you're trying to prove a point here, trying to back me into a corner, trying to make it seem like because I care for Taki, I can or should or must care for you, too. But what's broken between us now… It's not just that you were once some demon criminal. It's far more than that, and I'm not sure how to mend that rift. What you need to understand is that I fell for _Shuichi_ , but I don't know _you_. Kurama is a stranger to me. Yes, you're the same person, but by your own admission, you're also not."

With deliberate force, she pulled back the curtains, allowing the last of the day's sunlight to spill through the windowpanes, shattering the darkness. Being in this room, in dim seclusion, it had almost been as though they'd stepped into a different time, a different place, one where they hadn't wounded each other so deeply, but in the light, that magical sense of other burned off like wisps of smoke before the sun.

When she turned, the sunlight had caught along his profile, lancing across his brow and highlighting the cut of his jaw. He closed his eyes before it, his lashes splaying across his cheeks, and he didn't open them as Michi strode for the door.

"I don't know where this leaves us," she said, "but we have to work together for the transplants. If that means you need to be the frosty, distant man you were this morning, so be it." Beneath her palm, the door slid open on its tracks, and she stepped into the hall. "But," she added, glancing at him and noting the shades of pink strewn through his threads in a smattering of disappointed regret, "I think I'd like to get to know _you_ , Kurama. For real. If you can manage it."

She didn't wait for a response, didn't remain long enough to see whatever else might flow through his Loom. He'd make his decision. Once he did, she had no doubt he'd make it readily apparent.

And if he opted for the choice she feared he might, she was in no rush to see it come to fruition.

* * *

AN: Whew, that was a long one! But at last, Michi and Kurama have had their talk (even if it didn't quite go smoothly). And the gang has now seen the white threads in action. Will it do them any good? We'll just have to see.

Big, big thanks to everyone who reviewed last week: MissIdeophobia, LadyEllesmere, WistfulSin, Clumsy Ninjable, Laina Inverse, ahyeon, ballet022, Guest, o-dragon, and FaerieClouds! Y'all are the most wonderful.


	22. Under Skies of Slate

Genkai had set up shop in the kitchen, waiting for Michi, a pot of tea and a fresh stack of psychic seals perched before her on the table. "Got the answers you need, Kuroki?"

"Enough for now."

The woman snorted, but shoved the stack of parchment toward Michi. "Go rest, girl. We'll discuss today's events further come morning. Strikes me as a conversation best suited for the light."

By which Genkai almost certainly meant a dozen things. First and foremost, she probably recognized how tenuous Michi's hold on wakefulness remained. Not to mention the headache that persisted like a throbbing second pulse behind her eyes. However, this delay didn't seem a concession purely for Michi's sake.

It was more than that.

Though Genkai couldn't read the Loom, her keen eyes and sharp senses missed nothing, and she likely knew the state of every occupant in her temple—even Hiei, deep in the shrine's bowels, his threads a cluster of seething mauve sadness at the edge of Michi's awareness, streaks of black rage staging a weak contest against an overwhelming snarl of regret and mourning. Undoubtedly, this lull was as much for him as it was for Michi.

"Okay," she said, scooping up the seals. "Morning it is, then."

Leaving the old psychic behind, Michi turned back into the temple's halls and trekked for her room. Respite was close. Only minutes away now.

But first, she paused in a different doorway, peering through the crack at Asato. He sat atop his bed, files spread around him in a jumble of paperwork. _Of course_ he was working; _of course_ he couldn't grant himself a few hours of peace. Rolling her eyes, she rapped her knuckles against the doorframe and eased into the gap, propping a hip against the jamb.

He startled, gaze snapping up. "Damn, Meech. You're still functional?"

"Barely. Give me ten minutes and I'll be down for the count. At least until my stomach wakes me for dinner."

"Well get on with it, then. No need to dawdle with little old me. Go get your nap on."

"Actually," she said, rubbing sheepishly at her tired eyes, "I was wondering if you could lend me something to sleep in. I didn't exactly pack for an overnight—or for anything at all."

His brows rose, understanding dawning in his eyes' black depths, and he scrambled to his feet, careful not to disturb his nexus of transplant files. "Right. Sure thing."

As he dug through a backpack stuffed with clothes, she shifted her weight and murmured, "Plus, I wanted to thank you."

He paused. "What the heck for?"

"For having no clue the Detectives were coming to get me today. For not being the one who sent them." She fixed him with the most genuine smile she could muster, ignoring her territory's whining howl at the influx of lime surprise in his Loom. "But mostly for calling me Michi. Even though I'm back here. Even though you're all the more aware on how much my territory defines me than you ever were before."

He tossed a balled-up t-shirt her way. "Oh, shove off, Meech. I swore not to call you Weaver, didn't I? You don't need to thank me for sticking to it."

"Circumstances were a bit different when you made that promise."

Rocking back on his heels, a pair of running shorts in hand, he cocked his head. "Yeah? How so?"

"Well, for one thing, I officially know better than to think I can just wash my hands of all this and be done. It's not that easy. I should've realized that to begin with."

His grin shone bright as the sun. "Eh, I think I can forgive you. After all, I'd say the whole stubborn pride deal you're always accusing me of is more a family trait than an individual thing—even if you won't admit it. Either way, glad to have you back on the team." He threw her the shorts. "And just so we're clear, who are you here as?"

Michi or Weaver?

The answer wasn't hard.

"Still Michi."

He snapped off a salute. "Got it."

She stepped into the hall, but loitered long enough to look back at him and say, with all the firm, bold assertion she could, "I love you, Asato."

"Don't get sappy on me now, Kuroki," he barked, but despite the dismissal in his laughter and flapping of his hands, his Loom still gleamed with striking indigo, love echoing back at her loud and clear. It stayed with her as she returned to her room and plastered the walls with wards, a bolstering comfort against the fox-shaped chasm still roiling in her heart.

Others may come and go, but there would always be Asato.

He'd proven that long ago.

* * *

Sleep didn't come easily that night.

Michi had napped well into the evening, all too willing to give into her fatigue and escape her territory's unending ire. Even with the wards up around her bedroom walls, she'd been able to pinpoint Hiei's distant haunt in some far-off hall, and the press of his grief bit at her, chasing her into uneasy dreams.

By the time she emerged, woken by her stomach clamoring for some semblance of food, the shrine had gone quiet. She passed Genkai and Yusuke in a room off the main corridor, each clutching a console controller, thumbs jabbing and clicking with abandon as their avatars clashed on an old, pixelated television. Neither spoke, and the shades of their Looms too closely resembled what she'd last glimpsed of Hiei for her to mistake this gaming session as anything more than a weak attempt at distraction. Wordlessly, she left them to it.

In the kitchen, she found Kuwabara fiddling with the water boiler. His threads hung about him in weary ropes of gray, the Ties That Bind stretching off into the hall before fading out of sight, searching for the other Detectives despite the distance keeping their Looms out of reach. At the sight of her, he muffled a yawn against his wrist and hefted the boiler's pot, steam billowing from its mouth. "Hungry? I'm no Urameshi, but I can whip together some prepackaged ramen with the best of them."

Not a gourmet meal, but it'd do. "That'd be great."

Humming, he set to work, and soon he'd plopped a bowl of ramen before her, offering up a pair of chopsticks with a flourish. They ate in companionable silence, and she was slurping down the last bites when the door to the back porch rattled open, announcing Kurama and Hiei's return from a jaunt through the snowy, evening forest.

Unable to fathom further confrontation, Michi made a quick getaway, thanking Kuwabara and slipping back to her bedroom before the other men finished stripping off their shoes—and then she was alone, lying in bed, staring up at the darkened ceiling.

For hours.

Apparently, her nap had ruined her need for rest, and no matter how many cliché tricks she tried, no further sleep would claim her. Still, she remained beneath the covers, whiling away the minutes, Asato's too long shirt bunched around her waist. Nothing good waited in the halls beyond her door. At worst, an accidental run in with one of the Detectives—thought admittedly, Kuwabara's presence had proved enjoyable. At best, stronger exposure to the Loom of Life.

And Taki.

Mere steps away. Nothing but two flimsy doors between her and him.

In the end, even though that should've been precisely what kept her in bed, it was the thought of Taki's proximity that had her tossing back the covers and padding into the hall on stocking-covered feet.

The corridor was nearly silent, though if she strained her ears, she could make out snoring a few rooms away. Yusuke or Kuwabara, she'd guess, which made sense, given the location of Kurama's room. Genkai had probably housed them in a cluster. _Good_. That made it all the easier to steer clear of them as she turned left and made for Taki's bedroom.

His door was closed. Sometime since her last visit to the shrine, an external lock had been added to the doorframe, nailed into place with sturdy bolts, but it was a flimsy protection, meant to keep Taki in rather than visitors out, and the work of moments was all she required to undo the latch and slip inside.

As he'd been hours before, Taki lay huddled on the bed, a blanket tugged right up to his chin. His breath issued forth slow and steady, and this time, she thought he might truly be asleep, not merely faking as an excuse to ignore her.

Biting the inside of her cheek, she pressed her back to the wall and slid to the floor. Given the chance, Genkai and Asato probably would've scolded her recklessness in coming here, in sitting so close to a demon who might lose the last of himself at any moment. Certainly, her run-ins with Junko and Ryota had proven she was beyond her depth, but it didn't matter.

She wasn't going anywhere.

Sighing, she extended her legs, the wooden floorboards cold against her exposed thighs, and crossed them at the ankle. Wrapping her arms around her middle, she studied the rise and fall of Taki's back, frowning at his Loom's brittle fragility, his threads still white as the snow gathered outside, thin and dry as hay.

Was it less voluminous than most Looms? Had the threads she'd witnessed breaking left patchy voids behind in the tapestry of his soul? Or was that a trick of her imagination? Her brain attempting to compensate for the destruction she knew had struck?

And, more importantly than any of that, why did it remain intact at all?

Taki's had been the first threads to act up. Plenty of transplants had succumbed since, but Taki had been the initial instance. Prior to him, there'd been odd activity amongst psychics, but none of the halfway house's charges had been impacted.

Until Taki.

Taki and the first white threads.

Yet, here he was, months later. His Loom remained doused in white, yes, but it was still a Loom, still mostly whole, and he hadn't lost himself, not entirely, not as Junko and Dai and Ryota had. Her Taki was still within him. Growing fainter, maybe, but not erased like the others.

Which again begged the question: why?

What was different about Taki?

No easy answer presented itself, and as time bled onward, the palest rays of light seeped between Taki's curtains as the sun began its ascent. All the while, Michi studied Taki's Loom, analyzing it like she might study a diagram in her anatomy textbook, resolutely ignoring the headache that clamored in her temples, refusing to let it distract her. What she was searching for she couldn't say exactly, but she imagined she'd know it when she discovered it. A weakness in his Loom. Threads that were raveled too tight—or perhaps too loose. A peculiarity, no matter how small. Some sign why he wasn't like the others.

If not for her unwavering attention, maybe she would've missed it—the moment when his threads shifted. Moving. Doing that impossible thing no Loom had ever done before. Twanging like someone had grabbed hold and bunched them in a fist—or tried to. Because the grip didn't hold. The threads tumbled free, thrumming as if struck.

A breath later, the raveling began.

One thread at a time. Slowly. String by string. Tighter and tighter and tighter.

Until they snapped.

Michi's breath caught in her teeth, and she scrambled upright, a hand braced against the wall to keep her steady. A new question had risen in her, harkening back to what she'd seen the day before, right before Ryota attacked. It had seemed as though someone had cut through his threads, cleaving them clean in two.

But Taki's threads broke differently.

 _Why?_

As quick as the question came, so did an answer. One she should have seen long ago. One that struck her as so gobsmackingly apparent it seemed inconceivable no one had put the pieces together before.

She lurched for the hallway and bolted back to her room. Inside, Genkai's psychic wards peppered the walls. Tossing a prayer to whatever deity might be listening, Michi began prying the seals down, mindful not to tear them as she had the one Kurama once discovered in her apartment.

With a dozen in hand, she raced back to Taki and made quick work of papering them over his walls and window and door. Then she stood back and studied his Loom.

Just as she'd hoped, his threads had gone slack.

Their tightening ceased.

Her heart beat like a staccato drum in her veins as she returned to the hall and struck out for Asato's bedroom, lingering in her own only long enough to don her winter coat and scoop up her boots. Inside, Asato's room was dark, and she could barely make out the lump of his body beneath his blanket, sprawled stomach-down across his mattress.

She crossed to his backpack at the foot of the bed and reached out to shake his leg. "Asato, wake up."

A string of unintelligible mutters escaped him, and he flapped a hand in her direction, yanking his pillow over his head as he did. She shook him harder. He groaned, his covers slipping from his shoulders as he rolled over and sat up. "Michi?" A yawn chased her name off his lips, and he rubbed a hand over his bleary eyes. "Hell are you doing?"

"I need pants."

"Huh?"

She ignored him in favor of unzipping his backpack and pawing through its contents. A handful of t-shirts at the top, then a pair of black trousers, and at last, all the way at the bottom, the sweatpants she'd been hoping for. Quickly, she tugged the pants free of the rest, heedless of the shirts that spilled onto the floor, then yanked them over her bare legs and up above the shorts he'd lent her. His wiry frame and thin waist meant the sweats didn't prove too horrible baggy, and a yank on the drawstring was enough to cinch them around her hips.

Asato squinted at her, his threads a mired mess of gray fatigue, crimson irritation, and mossy apprehension. "Why are you stealing my stuff?"

A fair enough question, but not one she planned on answering. Not yet. Not when she still wasn't sure if she wasn't simply losing her mind or if she'd really stumbled upon an explanation. And if she wanted proper answers, she'd need him to along anyway. Might as well lure him into it. "You want to understand?" she asked. "Then come on. Get up. I'm not waiting."

True to her word, she swiveled, loping for the nearest exit to the porch. At the door, she paused long enough to stuff her toes into her boots, and the lull gave Asato time to catch up. He was dragging his feet, a jacket pulled haphazardly over his shoulders, the collar half-inverted, and his hair was a bedraggled mess, but his eyes were growing alert, narrowing in concentration as he glowered at her. "Is it even dawn? What the fuck has gotten in to you?"

"Language," she chided, and he snapped a further curse as she pushed open the door and jogged onto the veranda, down the steps, and into the snow.

"It's freezing out here," he called after her. "This is idiotic—"

"I have to check something. Come with me or don't, but I'm going."

"Now?"

"Now."

Another barked curse. "You can't go into the forest alone!"

Her path had carried her to the edge of the woods, and she glanced back as she ducked under a branch, discovering Asato still on the porch, dancing from foot to foot. "Well, I was under the impression I had company," she shouted back to him. "Get your butt down here and I won't be alone."

"But I'm not even wearing shoes!"

"Then go get some, you dolt." Over his next round of cursing, she added, "Meet me at the property line. I've got a theory I'm testing."

As she wove deeper into the undergrowth, trudging through ice-crusted snow, a new round of shouting drifted from the temple, this time from a voice she knew far less intimately than Asato's. Evidently, their yelling match had woken Yusuke. Fine with her. If she was right, she'd be rushing to wake the Detectives anyway. Asato's screeching had merely beaten her to the punch.

Beneath the trees, dawn's gray light was nearly nonexistent, and it took a few minutes of fumbling through the half-dark before her eyes adjusted. Even still, she made decent time, trekking ever-outward from the temple.

Back during the long months when she'd first come to Genkai for assistance, she'd often walked the edges of the compound's grounds. Genkai had issued Michi strict instructions not to venture into the unclaimed stretches of the forest or else risk running afoul of fiends Genkai wouldn't bother saving her from, but strolling within the secure perimeter had been fair game. It had been the farthest she could get from the Loom of Life. Out here, with only Genkai and Yukina for company, coming to the edge of the shrine's land had almost been like not having a territory at all.

That had been years ago, and she hadn't thought of those walks in almost as long, but she had no difficulty navigating her way to the overgrown path she used to roam, pushing through thickets of brambles and scratchy, leafless bushes until the open tract of the trail emerged ahead, a partially collapsed rock wall running alongside it. Without the collapsing wall, the path would've been indistinguishable from the rest of the snow-covered earth, but once she stepped atop its gravel, the familiar terrain came rushing back to her, recognizable even all these years later. Old rituals, it seemed, weren't so easily forgotten.

Five meters beyond the path, she found what she was looking for.

A cable. Thick, sturdy, made to weather even the worst storm. It hung from the trees, secured into the trunks with rusted spikes. In places, branches obscured the wire nearly completely, but she could still spot it, curving off into the woods, following the arc of the worn-down path.

More importantly still, lashed to the cable with sturdy bindings, dangled a psychic ward.

From the ground, twenty feet below the parchment, there was no way to test for sure, but Michi would've bet anything the paper was treated—against water damage, against rot, against age. This seal—and its dozens, if not hundreds, of cousins posted amongst these trees—was meant to stand the test of time. Almost certainly the same wards had hung here when she frequented this strip of forest in years past, as much a part of the landscape as the trees themselves.

Squinting up at the one overhead, she recognized the symbols. Identical—or darn near close enough—to those that plastered on her apartment walls. Like those now enclosing Taki.

Rustling footsteps and vitriolic grumbles announced Asato's emergence between the trees. From the sound of his approach, he wasn't alone, and sure enough, when she turned and sought her cousin between the skeletal branches, she discovered the ex-Spirit Detectives with him, all bundled into winter gear—with the striking exception of Hiei, whose muscled arms were exposed to the frosty air. Yusuke and Kuwabara were still pawing sleep from their eyes, and Yusuke's hair lacked its usual gel, for once free of its sculpted style.

"All right, Meech," Asato said, crossing his arms over his chest as he reached the pathway. "You roused the whole damn shrine. Now, tell me what the heck's gotten into you."

"I'm still working out the details." She held up a hand as she backed off the path, then twisted to face front and trekked twenty meters into the brush, calling over her shoulder, "Stay there, would you?"

Her route took her into the thickets beyond Genkai's property, out into untamed forest. This was the ground Genkai had forbidden her to traverse, and from what she'd been able to piece together, this stretch of the mountains harbored all manner of vicious, Demon World ilk. The logistics of how a bunch of apparitions made their homes in remote reaches of Human World had been one of a million things Michi had resolutely refused to learn more about, but she imagined Asato and the Detectives were all about to be very grateful their presence here had forced Genkai to post wards around her lands to keep the demons at bay.

Or, at least, she hoped that was the case.

Crossing her fingers within her sleeves, she drew an icy breath into her lungs. She tossed a prayer out, deciding that if anything was worth a god listening to, this might be it. If one was, she begged it to let her be right. To please, please, please let her have guessed correctly.

Then she turned.

And, despite her sleepless night, despite the hour, despite the sorrow of the last day, she let out a whoop of unbridled thrill—because all that awaited her beyond the line of psychic wards were four pale, nearly invisible Looms. Only four. All as washed out as Kurama's usually was. And Kurama's own had ceased to be, winking out of sight entirely.

"Michi?" Asato called, stepping closer and passing beneath the seal fluttering overhead. At once, his Loom returned, lit with brilliant emerald and a more-than-fair share of scarlet frustration. "Get talking. Before I'm forced to initiate drastic measures."

"Hold on! One more test!"

Before he could protest, she loped deeper into the woods. Another thirty meters. Under usual circumstances, fifty meters wouldn't stop her territory from seeing a Loom. Perhaps she wouldn't be able to discern its finer details, but it would still be there, a cloud of color on the horizon. These, however, weren't usual circumstances.

The Detectives' Looms had all disappeared.

Unable to wipe the grin from her lips, she raced back the way she'd come, ducking branches and leaping snow drifts before careening into Asato and spinning him in a circle. Bewildered, he didn't fight. For one turn and then two, he let her tug him around, but then he dug in his heels and hauled her to a standstill. "Did aliens steal your brain overnight? Who are you, and what did you do with my party pooper cousin?"

She stuck out her tongue at him and, when he squawked in disbelief, clamped a hand over his mouth. "I think I've figured out a way to protect the transplants. For a while, anyway."

"Huh?" Yusuke demanded, striding across the path and prying her apart from Asato. As he crossed under the psychic ward, his electric threads gleamed back to full brilliance. "It's way too early for riddles and running through the woods. Start making sense, kid—"

"I'm still not a kid, Yusuke."

"Oh yeah? Well, why the fuck did you come sprinting out here like an idiot with a death wish?" He crammed himself into the space between her and Asato, cocking an eyebrow with all the sarcastic might he could muster. "The shit in these woods could eat you for breakfast."

"Yup. Fully aware. Genkai delivered a variation on that speech enough times that I could repeat it in my sleep."

Confusion swept into Yusuke's Loom in a burst of greens and yellows.

Michi laughed and eased away from him. "What, did Asato not fill you in? I lived here for a few months after my territory manifested. I might not know the place as well as you do, but I'm not a stranger to this path." She stamped her boot in the snow, clearing a layer of powder off the gravel beneath. Then she snapped her fingers up at the psychic ward. "That's my safety marker. Inside it, I know I'm protected."

Yusuke frowned. "A piece of paper? Look, I've fought some of the freaks that live in these mountains. Some paper isn't going to do jack squat against them."

"Actually, Yusuke," Kurama said, faint amusement in his eyes, "Michi's right. That's a psychic ward. For a low-class demon, passing beneath it against the will of its creator—in this, Genkai—would prove thoroughly unpleasant, if not downright excruciating. For psychics, the impact is somewhat different." He glanced Michi's way, a smile tugging at his lips. "I have a conjecture as to where Michi is going with this."

For a moment, she was struck breathless by the warmth in his expression—and more than that, by how utterly and completely unaware of his Loom she was. She could guess his emotions, of course, but only in the way anyone could judge another's feelings.

And goodness, what magic there was in such lack of knowledge.

Staring up at the cable strung through the trees, Kuwabara said, "I forgot these were here."

Yusuke rolled his eyes. "I never knew."

"Then you're even more oblivious than we all thought," Hiei drawled. Like Kurama, he'd turned his focus to Michi, and though no smile had captured his lips, she couldn't help thinking the washed-out shades of his Loom might not be so far off from Kurama's had she been able to see the fox's.

Understanding. Respect. Recognition.

But none of the ill-hidden affection that she could've sworn glimmered at the depths of Kurama's eyes. Not that she was complaining. Hiei's affection was a gift she could happily do without.

Cursing, Yusuke flung his hands wide, frustration staining his Loom—fully visible because he stood on her side of the wards—in stark crimson. "The lot of you suck. I don't know why we're friends. Someone cut these stupid Ties That Bind. You bastards all have swords of some kind. Put an end to my misery." He swung back her way, jabbing a finger toward her. "And you, Kuroki, start explaining or I'm going to lose my cool."

Not even his exasperation could dampen her excitement. "It's been bothering me that Taki's Loom turned white first, yet so many others have been overcome while he continues to hold on to himself. Then, this morning, I went to see him, and I saw more of his threads break, but this time, I was watching when it started, and… It was different than what I saw in Ryota. His threads snapped right before he attacked me yesterday, only they didn't appear to fray so much as be cut in half. Which got me thinking."

"About your wards?" Kurama interjected.

She nodded. "If someone is actively breaking these demons' Looms, it's possible the wards around the compound are interfering with their ability to reach Taki. Usually, I'm _inside_ wards, not outside them. I wasn't sure what the effect might be externally, but I checked, and once I put my wards around Taki's room, all the fraying stopped in his threads."

Realization dawned in Asato's Loom in a bloom of aquamarine. "You came out here to confirm if these wards are like the ones Genkai made for you."

Another nod. "I'm not sure they are. Can't tell without getting closer. But the effect appears the same. When you were all inside the ward line and I was out there—" she pointed into the trees "—your Looms were much dimmer. Logically, it follows that Taki's Loom has decayed so slowly because whoever is doing this—and I think it _must_ be a person, not some ambient cause—struggles to get through the protection of the seals."

An uncertain grin spilled onto Kuwabara's lips. "If that's true, and we brought the transplants here, maybe even beefed up the number of psychic wards, we could stop their Looms from turning white."

She looked between them all, unable to stopper the rush of exhilaration in her veins as Asato slung an arm around her shoulders and drew her close, his Loom glowing with the same icy blue pride in her that had appeared the night before.

"Precisely."

* * *

Michi let a combination of Kurama and Asato lay out the details of her discovery to Genkai, using the time to take a much-needed shower, dress in the same leggings and sweater as the day before, and check in on Taki a final time. His Loom remained inactive, brittle and white, but no longer dissolving one thread at a time. It seemed the protection of her wards had held, at least for now. By the time she rejoined the others, they'd decided on a plan.

Today, they'd return to Mushiyori, and over the next week, they'd dole out assignments, determining who would pull in each of their remaining transplants. Every apparition they'd placed would be sent back to the shrine and housed temporarily, for as long as it took for the Detectives to track down the perpetrator behind the white threads. In the meantime, Genkai would further fortify the temple, adding as many psychic wards as feasibly possible to her grounds' perimeter. It wasn't a permanent solution, but if it stopped the demon attacks on defenseless humans, it might be enough to postpone Spirit World changing its decision on the halfway house's function.

Besides, it was all they had to go on for now.

So go on it they would.

Michi wasn't sure where she fit in yet, but she'd already decided she'd do whatever they asked of her. She was in this now, for the long haul. No going back. No second guessing. And for once, she didn't feel quite so lost, quite so adrift in a shoreless sea.

This was her choice. Not a verdict made for her. Its unknowns were numerous, and she doubted anything about getting further embroiled in the Detectives would prove simple, but so be it.

It was still her choice.

* * *

AN: And thus, at long last, Michi becomes an active participant in the otherworldly hijinks. She's spent so much of this story as a passive character (or an actively resistant one), and it's nice to finally flip the switch and give her a chance to test her mettle. Thanks to her territory, she was the only one in the right position to really make this connection, and now that she has, this story gets to move into a new phase. Woot!

Yet again, I'm posting at a very weird hour, but I'm spending Saturday with my grandparents, who I rarely get to see. They're 94 and 92 respectively, and that is just beyond bananas. It'll be a wonderful visit!

DUDES. You all CAME OUT for Michi last chapter and it was beyond amazing. Every dang one of you was in her corner, and it was sheer magic. To new reviewers and old, THANK YOU. You folks rock: LadyEllesmere, Dear author, knightsqueen05, E.V. Delacy, MissIdeophobia, Guest, WistfulSin, Shell1331, Star Charter, ahyeon, ObsidianPhantom, Leahcar-Soutaichou, and daochan!


	23. Writ in Navy and Will

After the planning session broke up, Michi spent half an hour in the meditation room with Genkai while the boys readied for the trip home. She sat upon a cushion, her legs folded beneath her, her head bowed, her palms laid flat atop her thighs, while ettled to Michi's right, Genkai nursed a cup of tea, the occasional sounds of her sipping providing the only break in the wordless quiet that passed between them.

Still, Genkai was not without means of communication, and she allowed her Loom to speak in ways words could never manage. Pride as ice blue as Asato's proved the most dominant force, but there was aquamarine satisfaction, too, and even a healthy dose of lavender affection. Together, it made a truth perfectly clear: Michi had earned Genkai's respect. She'd taken the woman's teachings and made a connection where the others couldn't. In doing so, she'd granted meaning to all the hours Genkai had spent aiding her.

She'd honored Genkai's efforts with one of her own.

And she wasn't done yet.

As a clamor in the main hall revealed the boys gathering at the door, Genkai creaked to her feet, leaving her teacup beside her cushion. "It's good to have you back with us, Kuroki," she said simply, then strode toward Yusuke's ruckus.

Michi bit back a smile.

* * *

The walk to the train station passed more quickly than she'd thought it would, helped in no small measure by Hiei, who—quite literally—blazed a path ahead, the snow gathered on the road melting into sloppy puddles as his boots drove through the powder.

She walked at Asato's side, content to watch the Detectives' antics from a distance. Already she'd begun to understand their dynamic, the jibe-riddled, sarcastic, deeply affectionate friendship that coursed between them. Threadbrothers, through and through. But recognizing their patterns and figuring out how she fit into them weren't the same thing. Trying to find a place within the folds of a kinship as deep as theirs was no easy feat.

"I think I get it now," she said to Asato, voice no louder than a whisper, "why you're so taken with them."

"What are you talking about?"

She looped arm through his, hugging him close and stifling a laugh as Yusuke and Kuwabara erupted in an argument and bounded off through the snow, bowling ahead of Hiei's melted path. "Over the years, whenever you managed to slip in a story about the mysterious Spirit Detectives—before I inevitably forced you to stop—it was always so obvious that you were… in awe of them isn't quite the right phrase. But you clearly respected them and cared for them in a way I don't think I've ever seen you do before. It makes sense now, why you felt that way."

He snorted and shook his head. "I think you're off your rocker, Meech." And then, extra low, his lips practically brushing her ear, he whispered, "Also, demons have pretty good hearing, so maybe let's talk about this some other time."

Unable to help herself, she jabbed her elbow into his ribs teasingly. "Why, dear Shade, are you embarrassed?"

"Shade, huh? Going back to that?"

She shrugged. "Just because I'm not Weaver doesn't mean you can't be Shade."

He tapped a finger against his lip, miming deep thought. "I don't know. Feels a bit pretentious to have nicknamed only myself."

"Trust me, that ship sailed the very first time you dubbed yourself Shade. Didn't matter that you named me, too."

A burst of cobalt humor clued her into his intentions a moment before he swooped downward and scraped up a handful of snow. Instantly, she disengaged their arms, leaping ahead just in time to dodge the snowball he peppered her way.

"Don't you dare, Shade!" she shrieked, bolting further up the road.

His next toss flew wide to the right, missing her, but still finding a target. In a burst of powder, it collided with Kurama's shoulder, spattering his hair in rapidly melting snowflakes. A flash of true lime revealed his momentary surprise, but it quickly blurred into muted blue as he glanced Asato's way. Lofting a brow, he extended a hand, revealing cargo she hadn't realized he was carrying. "Careful, Kido," he warned. "I assure you, damaging this friend of mine will prove a most disastrous mistake."

Though the blue of his Loom revealed his joking intention to Michi, Asato heard only the dry caution in Kurama's tone and went pale as the new snowball clutched in his hand. Tossing the snow back to the ground, he nodded hastily. "Right, sorry about that."

Muffling a chuckle, Michi ignored the flighty beat of her pulse and let herself fall into step beside Kurama.

What choice he'd made about the ultimatum she'd given him the day before, she still hadn't ascertained. Would he give her the chance to know him as Kurama or were they set to remain uncertain strangers? The way he'd looked at her that morning as they stood on opposite sides of the temple's ward line had woken hope in her chest, weak and sputtering, but she feared the frosty, distant man who'd greeted her the day before might reappear at any moment, and she dared not let her optimism grow too steady. Now, while she was still riding the high of her discovery, seemed as good a time as any to determine his decision.

After all, her courage might not last much longer.

"Color me curious," she said, and a flash of cobalt in his Loom told her he hadn't missed the pun, "but how exactly are you carrying a 'friend?'"

He chuckled and shifted the object in his hands so she could glimpse it better. What she discovered left her quizzical. A small pot, a long green stalk, unbloomed blossoms. Unmistakably, the plant from his windowsill.

Confusion drew her brows together. "Won't being exposed to the cold for so long end up killing it?"

He let out another laugh, as deep and warm as any he'd ever gifted her. It sent warmth pooling in her belly as he said, "I possess a few tricks to get around that."

"Ah."

Momentary silence fell between them, and she stared doggedly ahead, watching Kuwabara barrel back toward them, headed straight for Hiei, Yusuke on his heels. They seemed set on a collision course, but just as Kuwabara reached Hiei, the demon blurred out of sight, leaving a trail of melted snow in his wake as he sprinted up the road too fast for her to follow.

So inhuman.

And if Michi had to guess, whatever tricks Kurama might use on this plant of his probably weren't particularly human either.

"Michi," Kurama said as Yusuke and Kuwabara slowed to a reasonable pace up ahead. They were still bickering, voices raised loud, and it wasn't long before Asato jogged up to join them. She locked her eyes on the space between her cousin's shoulder blades, painfully aware of the shift taking place in Kurama's Loom as his mirth faded, its blue bleaching away to washed out pink.

Regret.

Icy fear grew in her heart.

"I'd like to do as you'd asked," he continued, "to get to know you as myself, rather than the piece of me I show Human World. But I'll admit, the prospect strikes me as challenging. I hope you'll forgive me if I struggle."

She forced words past the tightness in her chest. "Struggle in what way?"

"I'm unclear how to be merely friends with you. I'm not sure I _want_ to be capable of it." He sighed. "It goes without saying, the choice you've made is entirely reasonably. I can't stress enough how thoroughly I understand my role in getting us where we are, and I don't blame you for that. But in turn, if it's not too much to ask, I simply request that you forgive me any further failings as I learn to navigate our new dynamic."

"Kurama—"

"Any perceived distance," he said, overriding her with a force she wasn't accustomed to hearing in his usually soothing voice, "is a product of my own weakness, not a comment on you."

The ache in her chest didn't abate, not really, but its edges softened. "Okay," she whispered. "Consider forgiveness already extended."

Another sigh passed his lips, and he tipped his head back, staring up at the hazy sun. Deftly, he switched his plant to his far hand, then reached for her own. His fingers found hers, just for a moment, their long digits interlacing as he squeezed. As quick as the touch had come, he broke away, and then they simply walked. Side by side. In nearly—but not quite—companionable silence.

It wasn't perfect.

But it was enough.

For now.

* * *

"Where'd you run off to this weekend?" Runa asked as she and Michi rode the subway to campus early Monday morning. "I swung by your place after I escaped my dear, dear mother, but you weren't around."

Michi crinkled her nose. Of course, Runa was would check on her the one day she wasn't actually home. Why ever would the universe make the logistics of a double life easy on Michi?

Luckily, she'd foreseen the need for an explanation of some kind, if for no other reason than to clarify Kurama's return to her life. Though the girls had never seen Shuichi in person, and she could feasibly pass off any future friendship with Kurama as one with a man they'd never heard of, the idea of lying to them quite so profoundly turned her stomach. Better, she thought, to give them some loose details that approximated the truth than deceive them completely.

Which meant leaning on the narrative she'd already created, the not-quite-false reality in which Shuichi was an old friend of Asato's, and she simply hadn't known of their association until he showed up at Asato's holiday party. The finer points of whatever fight had supposedly broken them up remained hazy, and she planned to keep it that way. Let the girls think they had some vague, irreconcilable differences. After all, was that really so far from the truth?

Affecting her most world-weary sigh, Michi said, "Apparently, Asato grew sick of my 'moping' and he hauled me off for a surprise trip to meet his friends, the old crew of boys he hung out with in high school."

As perceptive as ever, Runa clucked her tongue distastefully. "The group Shuichi is a part of?"

"Yeah."

Their subway car lurched into the station, and Michi let Runa tug her through the departing crowd, more than happy to escape the storm gray exhaustion hanging over the sea of pedestrians like thunderclouds. Looms during the morning commute were always dulled by dreary, inescapable gray; perhaps that was why she'd grown to dislike mornings herself—or maybe she'd always been that way. She couldn't really remember anymore.

As the escalator churned them toward sunlight and fresh air, Runa eyed Michi over, the gray in her threads giving way to sharp emerald curiosity. "And was Shuichi there, too?"

"He was."

One finely arched brow quirked higher. "Spill the beans, Kuroki. How'd that go? Did he maintain spectacular jerk form?"

"Actually, no." Emerging onto the sidewalk, Michi took the lead, steering Runa toward campus. "He was perfectly civil."

"Ah, yes, because that's exactly the word any girl wants to use while describing her ex."

"It was fine, Runa. I swear." The crosswalk sign flashed the walk symbol, and Michi wasted no time beating a path across it. "We're going to take a stab at being friends."

Runa's laughter rang with disbelief. "Why? Michi, what point does that possibly serve? Why not let this guy waltz out of your life as breezily as he sauntered in?"

"Because he's Asato's friend. It's easier this way." And because for all her attempts at cutting him off, she wasn't yet ready for Kurama to fade into her past. She'd tried that for six weeks. The constant void in her chest had informed her most assuredly that erasing him wouldn't be so simple.

Runa shook her head, and as the pathway delivered them to the steps of Michi's lecture hall, she dragged fingers through her dark hair, frowning at Michi with a sternness echoed in the navy-wrought determination of her Loom. Her dark blue threads flowed amongst a web of coral concern, honed to sharpness beneath her stubborn resolve. "All I'm saying is that he's hurt you before. Once a jerk, always a jerk, yeah?"

"Runa—"

She held up her hands, backpedaling up the trail. "Hey, it's your heart. Do with it what you please. Just be careful. That's all."

* * *

The Detectives called their first planning session on Wednesday night—a full three days later than Michi had thought they would.

She'd assumed they'd get the ball rolling on pulling in their transplants from the very first moment available to them, but in that, she'd been wrong. Still, when the text came in from Asato providing her an address to meet at for dinner with the Detectives, she didn't ask questions. For all intents and purposes, she was an outsider tagging along on a mission far grander than anything she'd done for the halfway house so far—she wasn't about to start questioning how they ran their operation.

The destination Asato gave her turned out to be an apartment building in Sarayashiki. She arrived ten minutes later than Asato instructed, help captive by a delay on the subway line, then double-checked the apartment number against Asato's text three times before ringing the buzzer with an uncertain press of her finger, a nervous energy setting her bouncing on the balls of her feet while she waited. It was only a moment before the door's lock rattled open, and then, two quick flights of stairs and a tentative knock later, she stood before not one of the Detectives as she'd anticipated, but before Keiko.

Smiling brightly, Keiko waved her inside. "Come on in. We're just waiting for Kurama and Yusuke. They're bringing ramen from Yusuke's cart for everyone."

And by everyone, Keiko truly meant _everyone_.

The entryway fed directly into an open-floor-plan apartment, the kitchen blending into a cozy living room, far nicer than Michi had ever been able to afford. Kuwabara perched on a stool at the counter that provided the only divide between the rooms, Yukina at his side, their heads bent together as they talked, indigo spun like silk through their respective Looms. In the kitchen, Shizuru was savoring a beer, and she raised it in silent greeting as Michi entered.

Two sprawling couches occupied the living room, a cozy armchair kitty-cornered between them. Botan had claimed the wing-backed chair as her own, her feet tucked up beneath her, and she waved to Michi cheerfully. In the far corner, barely visible beyond the couches, Michi caught sight of Hiei. He sat on the floor, one leg extended, the other bent at the knee, his head tilted downward until his chin pressed to his collarbone. He looked for all the world like he'd drifted off to sleep, but his threads remained too sharp, too finely honed for his emotions to be those of a man lost to slumber.

Last but far from least, Asato, Yana, and Kaito had arranged themselves along one of the couches. Kaito didn't so much as stir from his reading when Michi arrived, but Yana lit up like a firework, his Loom billowing with pleased aquamarine as he gestured her over with a broad sweep of his hand.

Holding up a finger to him, she paused beside Keiko and toed off her shoes. "I didn't realize you were all involved in this."

"We're not really. The girls, I mean." She tucked her hair behind her ears, then propped her hands on her hips and surveyed the room. "But of our various apartments, this one provides the most seating space. Yukina, Shizuru, and I live here, so we'll be around for your plotting, but only because I refuse to let Yusuke kick us out of our own home."

Ah.

Michi should've known.

Certainly, this place didn't strike her as a fitting abode for Yusuke Urameshi. Somehow, she imagined he wasn't a big fan of the plethora of soft blankets, throw pillows, and delicate knickknacks strewn through the apartment with precise care. No, all of those little touches smacked of Yukina. Maybe Keiko, too. Probably not Shizuru, though, if Michi had to hazard a guess.

Dropping her voice to a murmur, Keiko added, "I'm glad you could make it, Michi. I was surprised—in the best of ways—when Yusuke told me about you joining the guys this weekend. Thanks for helping. I know they were counting on you."

Had they been?

What an ill-thought out plan that might've proven to be. If Runa hadn't canceled on her, Michi would've refused to accompany them, and then where would they've been?

"I've not done much yet," she deflected. "So no thanks necessary."

Keiko's gaze softened, and she said no more of gratitude. The tact she chose instead surprised Michi thoroughly. "If you ever have a free night, I'd love to grab dinner sometime. No pressure of course, but I thought it might be nice. I know you're a psychic, but I think we have more in common than you might realize."

"That'd be lovely," Michi said—and truly, she meant it.

Keiko grinned. "Fantastic. Maybe this weekend? Or, well, whenever the boys don't steal you off. I guess we'll know your freedom a bit better in a few hours."

"So it seems."

Further conversation was stymied as Yana lurched up from his seat and loped to Michi's side. He snaked his arm around her shoulders and crushed her to him. "Sorry, Keiko," he drawled in that slow-as-molasses way of his. "Afraid you're out of Michi time. My turn." With that, he towed Michi back to the couch and flopped into his seat, dragging Michi down beside him. A smirk slanted across Asato's lips as he wiggled sideways to give her space

"Well, hello to you, too, Yana," she said.

He slung an arm along the couch's cushions at her back and stretched out his legs. "You know, I was genuinely starting to believe you'd never come around."

"To what?"

He twirled a finger in the air. "To being a part of all this."

From Yana's far side, his nose still buried in his book, Kaito added, "I do believe I won our bet."

"You had a bet?"

Asato snorted. "We've had at least a dozen. You keep outlasting even our most pessimistic guesses."

A week ago, this revelation might have irked her to no end. Now, she merely shook her head and jabbed an affectionate elbow into both Asato's and Yana's ribs. Over their disgruntled squawks, she said, "Well, I hope Kaito won something good."

"Working for the halfway house doesn't pay well, I'm afraid." Asato's threads rippled with wry cobalt as he leaned forward and waggled his brows at Kaito. "Bet was for a beer and ramen." He splayed an open palm toward the door right as its knob rattled and it swung inward, revealing Yusuke, his foot extended, still hovering after kicking the door open. "The latter is officially delivered."

Kaito deigned to dignify Asato's weaseling with an unamused stare. "Free ramen from Urameshi hardly fulfills the terms of our agreement."

"I dunno," Yana said. "Don't remember there being a lot of rules defining how the ramen was provided."

Huffing, his thread turning navy as stubborn fortitude straightened his shoulders, Kaito thumbed to the next page of his book. "We'll discuss further in a more opportune setting, but I assure you, this payment is most certainly not accepted."

"All I know," Michi said, "is that if he's getting ramen, I'm getting some, too."

Yusuke put a halt whatever rebuttal Asato had planned, hollering from the doorway."Oy, will someone help with the damn bags?" Yana was on his feet in a second, reaching Yusuke a step before Keiko, and together the two unloaded the bags of takeout containers in Yusuke's arms, then eased Kurama's burden as he followed Yusuke inside and nudged the door closed.

Yusuke's arrival set the gathering into motion, the savory aroma of his ramen drawing the others into the living room like hummingbirds to a flower's nectar. Even Hiei abandoned his haunt in the corner, nabbing a bowl of ramen with a grunt of appreciation before retreating back to his haven. Yana delivered four steaming containers to the couch, handing them out and then returning to his seat, wedged between Michi and Kaito.

As she pried the lid off her bowl, Michi looked up, searching for chopsticks and discovered a pair extended to her by a slender, scarred hand. _Kurama_. His smile was polite, immeasurably warmer than the aloof mask he'd shown her Saturday morning but still a far cry from Shuichi's kind, glowing manner.

This time, she tried not to let his distance sting.

She didn't quite succeed.

When everyone had settled—Yusuke and Kurama claiming the open couch, Kuwabara dragging his stool into a gap in the ring formed by the couches and armchair, and Keiko, Yukina, and Shizuru retreating to the kitchen, where they chatted in hushed murmurs—Yusuke jabbed his chopsticks at Asato, heedless of the inherent incivility. "All right, Kido. This whole halfway house nonsense is your operation. Take it away."

"Me?" Asato asked in halting disbelief.

"Do I know another Kido?"

A flicker of lime surprise twined through Michi's peripheral vision, but it quickly gave way to ice blue pride as Asato set down his ramen, bent over a backpack nestled at his feet, and rifled through its contents. "Here goes then," he said, raising his voice over the rustle of the dozens upon dozens of folders he hefted free of his bag. Michi knew those files instantly. "I'll admit, all I've been thinking about since Sunday is our best next steps. I think this is where we start." He plopped the towering stack down on the coffee table, then dove back in for a second batch. "Transplant files. For every demon we've placed."

Kuwabara whistled. "Damn. I didn't realize there were so many."

"Shouldn't be surprising. It's been nearly three years since we started." Asato lifted the top portion of the folders free, and Michi spotted green sticky notes plastered to the top of each. "These are the demons we've already extracted back to Demon World, the ones who grew unstable between New Years and now. Taki and Ryota are in here, too. There aren't many in the grand scheme of things, but at least they're one piece we don't have to worry about any more."

Once he shoved the dozen folders back in his bag, he splayed a hand atop what remained. "All of these files are active transplants. One hundred and ten of them. Scattered across Japan. The majority are relatively local, but some will require a bit of a hike to retrieve."

Bracing his ramen container atop his crossed legs, Kurama appraised the files with sharp, calculating intensity. He was dressed in slacks and a button down, the sort of outfit that suggested he'd come here straight from work at his step-father's company. "How do you propose we proceed with their removal?"

"Well, that's where it gets tricky. We don't know how many of these demons have been afflicted with the white threads yet. It's possible they're all their normal, nonviolent selves, but it's also possible not a single one is untouched. Because of that uncertainty, first and foremost, I think we need to target the transplants Hiei identified as high risk—the upper-class demons with the ability to wreak havoc in their communities." He met the eyes of each Detective in turn. "You saw what Dai could do when he lost control, and his power levels hardly breached Spirit World's ranking system."

"Makes sense," Yusuke said. "Pull out the dangerous ones first. Easy enough."

Asato nodded. "Right. But the trick—and I truly think this is the most important piece—is that I believe whoever placed these demons should be present for their extraction."

From her armchair, legs still pretzeled beneath her, Botan piped up. "Meaning who?"

"The people on this couch, mostly." Asato glanced sideways at Michi, then down the line to Yana and Kaito. She didn't need the direct view of his navy threads to know how steadfast he was in this conviction. "What Michi has proven over and over with Taki is that a stabilizing, familiar presence may be the only thing to calm these demons down enough for a peaceful withdrawal. And if you look at the extractions we've done over the last month, you'll find the pattern backs me up. When Yana was present for the removal of his transplants, they cooperated without major incidents; when he wasn't, you brought them in by force. Not to mention, all three of Michi's transplants you apprehended put up a fight."

Yusuke drummed his fingers on his knee, his ramen forgotten. "Still making sense. I'm not seeing why that's tricky to make happen."

He might not, but Michi did.

"How quickly are you hoping to get through these?" she asked, frowning at that towering stack of files, all too aware of the direction this line of reasoning was headed.

He screwed up his nose, shoulders rising in a sheepish shrug. "That depends on how much time you can offer us."

"Why Michi in particular?" Kurama asked.

A laugh rumbled in Yana's chest, vibrating through Michi's arm. "Show 'em, Kido."

Sighing, he nodded. "Right, so here's how the assignment of these transplants breaks down." Asato lifted a layer off the top of the pile, each dossier marked with a red sticky. No more than ten files rested in his hands. He leaned across the couch and dropped them in Kaito's lap, failing to spill the boy's ramen thanks only to Kaito's display of surprisingly adept reflexes. "Kaito and I placed these apparitions. We were only fill-ins, stepping up whenever a conflict arose for Yana or Meech, so there weren't many that fell to us. These are Yana's." The stack he peeled away was thicker this time, and it took him a second pass to collect the rest. All told he handed Yana three dozen or so identified with a blue sticky note. "And those," Asato said, pointing to the remaining folders, nearly seventy in all, "belong to Michi."

A squawk of astonished surprise followed the bloom of lime that dyed Kuwabara's threads, and similar bewilderment swept across the gathered team in a wave of neon green, too many sets of eyes roaming Michi's way.

She squirmed under their cumulative attention, reaching out to run a finger down the stack. "I didn't realize it was so many. Or—" she shot Asato a smile that was half-wry, half-exasperated "—that you were lumping so many on me."

He offered up another shrug. "You're good at it, Meech."

And she had been.

Sifting a handful of files off the top of the pile, she thumbed through them, scanning the names writ across each in Asato's jagged, slanting penmanship. _Akemi. Matsu. Sachi. Nishi. Kikuko. Uta. Mura. Hideyo._ On and on. Dozens of names. All inked into her mind as surely as they were scrawled across these records.

She didn't need to flip to the pages within to recall their faces. With their names alone, she conjured up the details of their transfers. Their temperaments. The ease—or lack thereof—with which they'd adapted to life in Human World. How often she'd returned to their new homes to ease their adjustments. None were as precious to her as Taki, but all had found a place in her heart.

And now, all were at risk.

All in danger.

Her grip tightened on the folders in her lap. "'Good' is perhaps not the right word. I had an unfair advantage."

Silence held for a moment, disturbed only by the rustle of cloth as Hiei rose from his corner and strode to their circle's edge. He crossed his arms over his chest, glowering at the dossiers of Michi's charges for a heartbeat before raising his smoldering gaze to Michi. "No," he said flatly. "You had— _still_ have—a useful skill. It's not cheating to utilize it."

The conviction in his tone, the no-nonsense note of finality with which he spoke, stole Michi's breath away, and sitting there, looking up at him over the impressive stack of lives they'd changed together, she was struck by the strange irony that of all the people in this room—barring, of course, Asato—it was Hiei who'd she'd had the longest, most consistent relationship with.

Of all the Detectives and Botan and even Yana and Kaito, Hiei was the only one she'd seen regularly for nearly three years of her life. In the heyday of her first year at Mushiyori University, when she'd placed the majority of her charges in their new homes, sometimes as many as four a month, her interactions with Hiei had been almost weekly. Often, she'd seen him more frequently than even Yana and certainly more than Kaito, who, when she got right down to it, had been rendered little more than a stranger thanks to the awkward detachment of their dynamic.

Which meant, with the exception of Asato, if anyone here was equipped to judge Michi, it might very well be Hiei.

In and of itself, that wasn't such a strange thought. But what was strange—what _did_ turn the very fabric of the world on its head—was the nature of HIei's judgement.

There was a stony, unwavering respect hidden in his garnet eyes, a degree of regard for her and what she'd accomplished for the halfway house that she never would've dreamed he harbored. It set fire to her chest, a smoking, smoldering pride that a demon as haughty and callous as Hiei recognized merit in her.

Maybe that was a sign of her own miscalculation, her own oversight of her territory's worth—of _her_ worth. Or maybe it was a misjudgment of him. Maybe she'd never understood him as well as she'd thought she had.

Either way, as Hiei paced to the table and lifted the top folder off the stack, his threads a bitingly bright mix of navy determination and mauve grief, Michi realized what she probably should have seen long ago. Hiei wasn't just her Demon World counterpart in the halfway house's complex scheme. He was more than that. He was her _partner_ —and as much as the safety of her transplants weighed on her shoulders, it surely weighed just as heavily on his. He'd helped bring these demons to Human World. He'd vetted their applications. Often, he'd handpicked them himself. Sometimes, like in Ryota's case, he'd even convinced them this was a place where they could make a home.

And now, just as she did, he knew exactly how deeply he'd put them at risk.

Rather than contesting his assertion about her skillset, she gifted him a tight smile and turned to Asato. "I'm out of classes by early afternoon each day. I could feasibly promise four or five extractions a week, give or take depending on how far I'd need to travel."

"Won't that take too long?" Kuwabara asked. A crease darkened his brow. "That's fourteen weeks if we don't hit a single delay."

Asato splayed both palms to still the conversation. "We're getting ahead of ourselves. I'm not suggesting we only withdraw transplants while their handler is present. We'll never be able to do this efficiently that way. But here's what I do propose. First—" he extended a demonstrative finger "—Kaito and I—and anyone who wants to assist—will make contact with all our remaining transplants. We'll request, with as little alarm as possible, that they report to Genkai's compound until further notice. In cases where we're met with resistance, which I fear we will be more often than not, we'll need to proceed with an in-person removal."

He unfurled a second finger. "That's phase two. Whenever possible, I think the handler should be involved in that confrontation, but—recognizing the impossibility of that—there are other factors that must be weighed, too. We'll need to balance the degree of threat each transplant presents as well as the nature of their response to our initial contact. Particularly bullish or hostile demons should be pulled first, with or without their handler present."

"Is there a stage three in your plans?" Kurama asked. His eyes were hooded, as though his mind was only half-focused on those present around him, and if Michi had to guess, she imagined he must be running calculations, looking for flaws in Asato's proposal, seeing the dozens of ways this could go wrong.

Asato shrugged helplessly. "Find whoever's doing this. Stop them. I don't know. That part is more your jurisdiction than mine."

"Fair enough." Kurama's gaze flitted to each of his former teammates. "It's as strong a plan as any of us might offer. But if it's going to do us any good, we'll need to begin immediately."

Kaito straightened up and thrust his empty ramen container onto the table. With one long, pale finger, he pushed his glasses further up his nose. "Then let's commence."

* * *

AN: This week royally kicked my ass. Thank goodness I have chapters pre-written, because I wrote less this week than I have since early August. It was a hard one, gotta say. But I made it, and this chapter is up! So we're all good!

Next week's chapter contains what is probably my favorite Hiei moment I've ever written (which is weird considering my fics are usually HieixOC, haha). I've been dying to share it since the moment I drafted it. Can't wait to finally do so!

Boundless thanks to the wonderful souls who reviewed since last weekend! Hearing from you all made this week suck just a wee bit less. So many new names pop up so consistently, and it's such a joy to see this story find new readers. Love to all of you: Star Charter, Laina Inverse, A, WistfulSin, MoonlitMajick, ahyeon, MissIdeophobia, Kristy Himura, Guest, Grimmy, Shell1331, and Snowgirl7589.


	24. Nights So Black

They started with a review of the files, running through all one hundred and ten documents as the evening bled toward midnight. Michi kept quiet, unable to contribute anything of worth as the men debated the threat each demon presented, accounting for both their sheer power levels and the techniques with which each apparition was skilled.

It seemed, from what she gathered, that they placed more fear on the unraveling of demons whose gifts lay in brute force, apparitions capable of summoning explosives from nothingness or tearing apart a city block with little more than their will, rather than those capable of finesse-based arcana—though the latter were by no means less unsettling. There was simply a choice that had to be made: eliminate the risk of a broad scale attack or protect individual humans from more targeted assault?

In the Detectives' minds, the correct option was obvious.

Ultimately, they formed four categories of threat level and sorted the files accordingly, then set about concocting a plan for contact with each. Botan volunteered cheerfully to handle communications with the low risk pile, effectively eliminating thirty dossiers from their workload, and the rest Asato divvied up between himself, Kaito, and—to Michi's surprise—both Hiei and Kurama.

The general consensus seemed to be that Yusuke and Kuwabara could better serve the cause elsewhere. Namely, they were charged with planning the best means of reaching each transplant's residence. They weren't to make any ticket purchases yet, but as soon as the others compiled a list of apparitions requiring forcible removal, Kurama wanted them ready to deploy whichever handler had managed the file—and their affiliated protectors—immediately. If all went according to plan, true extractions would begin the following Monday, though they'd act sooner if possible.

Which left only Michi and Yana's tasks to determine.

As the night drew to a close, Kurama sifted through his allotment of files, gaze darting across the pages. He didn't look up as he asked, "Do you remember your transplants?"

Fifteen minutes prior, Botan had departed, the records of the low risk transplants clutched to her chest, and five minutes after that, Yusuke had made an extended—and thoroughly dramatic—exit down the hall to Keiko's bedroom. Kaito and Asato had broken off to the kitchen counter in the midst of Yusuke's departure and now poured over documents, plotting their next mornings' calls. Without all those other faces, it was harder for Michi to keep her focus off Kurama, and not for the first time that night, she found herself wondering if the hard-eyed, concentrated young man across from her was a closer approximation of his true self than anything she'd seen of him before.

Beside her on the couch, Yana sprawled his broad frame into Kaito's emptied space, threading his hands behind his head and staring up at the ceiling. "Well enough. A quick refresher, and I'll have them down pat."

Tearing her gaze away from Kurama's sleek profile, Michi nodded and stifled an unwilling yawn. "I'll review their records to be safe, but yes, I know them all."

"Hn. Seventy names and faces and histories," Hiei drawled. "You truly remember all that?"

"I do. Or near enough." She shoved a hand through her hair, slumping into the couch's backrest. "But as I said, I've still got their files, so it won't be too hard to work back through them and double check my memory. Some of my notes may prove useful."

"Huh?" Kuwabara leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. He'd abandoned his stool in favor of Yusuke's seat on the couch, and Michi couldn't help but notice the exaggerated difference between his comfortable slouch and Kurama's meticulous poise. "You've got stuff not in these files?"

"Not much, but yes. In the beginning, especially the first year, I took notes on all their Looms. It was an assignment from Genkai, more or less. One of her means of training my territory. A bunch of notes about thread colors wouldn't have been useful to anyone else—or so I thought—so I never bothered sending them on to Asato, but it might help us now. If nothing else, it'll give me a baseline against which to judge the Looms of those we collect."

"Good," Kurama said. "We can use any added information we can compile. In fact, I'd theorize your notes on their Looms may be helpful to us even for extractions you can't participate in. If you could translate whatever you've logged into a basic detail of your transplants' personalities, it'd be of use."

"I'll see what I can do." She blew out a heavy sigh. Her easy course load for the spring semester seemed to be a thing of the past—though she doubted Mushiyori University would be open to giving her credits for this endeavor. "I might not have time for all of them, but I can prioritize dangerous cases and certainly any that I won't be able to assist with in person."

Yana nudged her with his foot. "Stop showing me up, Michi. I don't have any of these fancy extra notes."

Kurama chuckled, then rose gracefully to his feet, gathering his folders neatly in one arm. His briefcase waited by the door, abandoned when he'd arrived, and he made for it, saying over his shoulder, "Hardly a fair standard to hold yourself to, Yana. As Hiei said, Michi's territory is a tool exceptionally fitted to this task. None of us could hope to rival its sheer utility."

High praise.

So ridiculously so as to border on absurdity.

"Let's not get carried away," she said. "Perhaps save your praise for someone who can actually control their territory."

Kurama slipped his files into his briefcase, then slung its strap over his shoulder before bending to lace his dress shoes. "From all I've seen, your control far outstrips the credit you give yourself. Modesty to the point of self-detriment serves no greater purpose, Michi."

His words left her speechless—not with the pride he perhaps intended to instill in her, but with stinging annoyance at his unflinching gall, at how easily he dismissed her knowledge of her skills in favor of his own supposed understanding. Gritting her teeth, she summoned up a likeness of words he'd said not so long ago. "Kurama, perhaps don't paint me with your perception without paying mind to that which you don't yet comprehend."

He stiffened for a moment, and a hush fell over the men remaining in the living room, even Hiei ceasing to rustle through the files in his lap. Then Kurama exhaled with slow, steady intention, as if he could will the crimson annoyance and pale mauve hurt from his Loom with sheer obstinacy alone. "Apologies for overstepping."

At once, Michi regretted her barb. What had it been meant to accomplish? To hurt him? Because he'd hurt her and, no matter how desperately she wanted to, she'd yet to truly let that pain go?

Bending his torso in the briefest of bows, he said, "I'll be in touch when I've completed my calls to these transplants. We'll solidify our plans from there. Night, all."

And like that, he was gone, off into the evening and a long subway ride back to Mushiyori. The urge to race after him spouting apologies surged in her gut, but her legs wouldn't obey. Beleaguered, she tried to think it best. After all, proper manners required her to bid good night to her hosts or failing that—since the girls seemed to have gone to bed—at least to Asato.

Still, she couldn't hide her wince as Kuwabara flopped backward onto the couch and said, "Well, that could've gone better. You probably don't want advice from me, but lashing out at Kurama doesn't usually end well."

Shizuru had mentioned something to the same effect the night of the disastrous party, some veiled reference to conflict with Kurama not going smoothly for the opposition, but Michi didn't care about strange, oblique threats. The sort of damage Kurama might do to her wasn't physical or spiritual or anything like that. In fact, he'd been far more likely to hurt her as Shuichi than as Kurama.

Which wasn't to say she couldn't still hurt herself.

* * *

It took twenty more minutes before Michi had wrapped up her goodbyes and found her shoes in the entryway. Asato and the boys were staying a short while longer, caught up in a discussion with Kuwabara and Yusuke, who'd emerged from Keiko's bedroom for a bathroom break and never quite made it back down the hall.

But as Michi pulled her shoes snug over her toes, she found she wasn't alone at the door. Hiei loitered on the threshold of the living room, gaze locked on the exit, yet clearly waiting for her to lead the way out.

Brows rising, she asked, "Did I forget something?"

"Hn."

Well.

As eloquent as ever.

Turning her back on his wire-like threads, she departed, calling a final goodbye to Asato before winding a path back down the stairs and out into the chilly night. Wordlessly, Hiei tailed her. He became her shadow, gliding behind her through the moonlight.

"You know," she said, "if you have something to say to me, just do so."

His temper prickled in streaks of black obsidian, roving into her peripheral vision as he sidled up beside her. "Your victim act grows old."

"Ah." She laughed, though there was little humor in the sound. "I'm sure matters of my fickle, feeble human heart disgust you endlessly, but I'm not playing victim or acting at anything."

"Yet you ask the impossible, then lash out when that bar cannot be reached."

Truthfully, Michi hadn't expected this. Not from Hiei of all people. Standoffish, insensitive Hiei was the last person she'd anticipated calling her out. She might have thought brash, straight-forward Yusuke capable of it, and Kuwabara's heart appeared too big for his chest, but Hiei? Never.

Yet here they were—and the explanation seemed apparent enough.

"You're close to Kurama," she said softly.

"You called us Threadbrothers, did you not?"

This time, her laugh rang true. "Look, Hiei, I don't want to hurt him. If anything, I wish we could go back to how things were. I can't tell you how many times I've imagined what could've been if I never let Asato drag me to Genkai's, if I'd never told Kurama what I am. But we can't do that, so now we have to figure out a new dynamic. I don't think it'll be easy for either of us."

"But you need not make it harder."

"I know."

He blew a breath through his nose. "Nor can you allow it to distract us. Don't lead him astray while his focus should be elsewhere."

On the transplants. On the lives they had to save—before they became like Ryota, before they become pinpricks of oblivion upon the Loom of Life's endless tapestry.

She curled her hands into fists within her sleeves. "It's not your fault, what happened to him." She didn't need to use Ryota's name; Hiei understood her meaning instantly. "I can see it—the way you're blaming yourself, your guilt and regret, how you're turning your grief into a weapon against your own soul. But it's not your fault. And it's not mine. Even when it feels like it is."

They reached the subway entrance, and he halted, hands buried in his pockets, glaring into a void she couldn't see. Mourning etched itself across his cheeks in strings of gleaming mauve, made sharper still by highlights of bright pink remorse.

Hardly daring to breathe, she pressed a hand against his forearm. "We can't change what happened, but we can protect those who are left. I promise I want that as badly as you do, and I'm not going to let anything interfere."

His own hand rose, sliding free of his cloak's black depths, his fingers curling over her knuckles like heated brands. For a moment, he stood motionless, holding—no, _clutching_ —her palm against his muscled flesh, his gaze still lost to some far-off place. The mauve threads woven through his Loom stretched across his cheeks like fresh healed scars, raw and red and hurting, echoing a pain that had pulsed in Michi's chest like a second heartbeat since the moment Ryota fell into the snow, a wraith no more.

Then Hiei's grip tightened. "I waste no time on regrets, girl." Grimacing, he released her, all but tossing her hand away.

Yet he went nowhere, and she realized with a start that he intended to accompany her all the way home—as if he thought it not safe for her to travel so late alone.

She didn't fight him on it, nor stop him from tracing her steps into the subway's rattling tunnels, and—perhaps most importantly—she made no attempt to name his lie for what it was.

That she let him keep. Weak, flimsy armor for his fraught soul.

He'd earned that much.

* * *

In bed that night, she texted Kurama. Even now, so many months later, his number remained nameless in her phone, a bleak, taunting reminder that Shuichi had never truly existed at all.

Her fingers tapped across the screen in the pitch black of her bedroom, carving out a message she should've managed in person. _–I'm sorry. I was out of line. I appreciate the value you see in my territory, even if I'm not sure I agree. Thank you for trusting in me. I hope I won't prove that confidence misplaced.–_

She expected no response, wouldn't dare to hope for one. Yet when she woke, a text from an unknown contact waited upon her phone's screen.

– _You're stronger than you believe, Michi—and that strength has less than nothing to do with your territory. Perhaps you'll learn to see that someday soon.–_

And then, a second message. Simple. Short.

– _It's all I see.–_

* * *

Thursday and Friday quickly blurred into the weekend, lectures on campus consuming Michi's mornings and nights spent combing through her transplant notes absconding with the hours she would've spent gaming just a week before. Her phone buzzed near constantly, texts from Asato and Kaito keeping her informed of their progress recalling demons across Japan. More often than not, the news wasn't good.

They'd integrated their charges well. Too well, apparently.

So many of the demons rejected the summons, adamantly rebuking the idea of abandoning the lives they'd created for themselves, the jobs they'd earned, the relationships they'd formed. And for every transplant the boys successfully contacted, there was at least another—often two or more—who proved unreachable.

By Sunday, one hundred and ten demons in need of withdrawal had become eighty-seven. A small success, but not nearly enough.

The Detectives called another meeting, but a territory-induced headache kept Michi bedbound until early afternoon, and though she hated doing it, she texted Asato, letting him know she wouldn't make it and asking that he fill her in on the details that night. Their exact targets had yet to be decided, but Michi knew Yusuke was set on the first extractions beginning come Monday. He was sick of waiting.

Truthfully, so was she.

And if she was going to be useful, she needed to kick this headache. Which meant no meeting, no exposure to the Ties That Bind or Hiei's cutting grief, to Yusuke's electric vivacity or Kurama's heartrending presence. No matter how badly she wanted to assist in planning, this was not her role.

That was yet to come.

* * *

Monday, they broke into two groups.

Yana went with Kaito, Asato, and Kuwabara, leading them an hour into the city's outskirts, off to collect a demon whose skin produced a paralytic toxin. When properly maintained, Umeko's venom could be controlled with relative ease, removed from his skin each morning after his glands produced it while he slept. But if he lost control, if he became even slightly lackadaisical in his upkeep, he could spread that poison through Mushiyori with the barest touch.

Michi, on the other hand, headed east, accompanied by Hiei, Yusuke, and Kurama. They piled aboard a train in mid-afternoon and rode to Tokyo. Michi used the time to finish a reading assigned that day, then let herself slide in and out of a restless nap, fitful sleep sending her into scattered dreams of her disastrous attempts to reason with Junko and save Ryota.

But it seemed her nightmares were more threatening than reality.

Though Matsu hadn't answered any of Kurama's numerous check-ins over the preceding days, they found the apparition precisely where they'd hoped to—tucked in her tiny apartment, entirely at peace, her Loom not touched by so much as a trace of white.

Her phone, it turned out, had met an untimely end the week before, dropped in the street and shattered beneath the tire of a passing car. A freak incident, and one she hadn't bothered to report to the halfway house yet because her days had been hectic.

Matsu listened raptly to Michi's explanation. Aware of how easily she could incite fear with a misplaced word, Michi kept it abbreviated, but her meaning was clear all the same: remaining in Tokyo was no longer safe, for either Matsu or the humans around her, and Matsu needed to return to the shrine. Without hesitation, Matsu agreed.

They gave her a half hour to pack and call in to the job Asato had helped secure for her nearly two years ago, sketching a story of a relative who'd recently fallen ill and required Matsu's assistance. All the while, as the apparition raced around her apartment, gathering her life into a singular bag, Michi watched her hands, unable to look away from the tattoos inked across her pale flesh.

When she'd placed Matsu two years ago, she'd thought those tattoos little more than some strange demon custom. Their broad, black strokes possessed a strange, somehow threatening beauty, but it hadn't occurred to Michi that they might mean more than she could then understand.

On the ride here, Hiei had enlightened her to the truth.

Those markings were arcane symbols, part of an ancient, sacred demon rite that had granted Matsu incredible power. With a sweep of her wrist and snap of her fingers, she could incinerate endless swathes of land, could boil the blood within a person's veins, could melt their very skin from their bones. It was a gift so terrifying that Kurama had identified Matsu as the most dangerous transplant the moment she didn't pick up his first call, and that was why he'd called a dozen times more, never to receive an answer.

All those tattoos, all that barely hidden power, somehow packaged within such a small, fragile body. Matsu was a pixie-like creature, flitting and dainty, but the ink across her fingers proved how little of a demon could be judged on appearance alone, how many secrets demonkind harbored within their flesh.

It was a truth whose relevance to Michi's own entanglements did not go undetected.

But while Matsu darted about her home, the men gathered on her balcony, standing straight and tall and unbothered in the gusting wind of late February. Yusuke carried on a conversation nearly single-handedly, his boisterous enthusiasm audible through the sliding, glass door. Michi stayed inside, perched on the couch, a nervous energy setting her fingers fiddling in the hem of her blouse, knotting and unknotting, twisting and untwisting. By the time Matsu was ready to depart, an ache had sprung up in Michi's fingertips, painful but steadying.

Matsu was one transplant. One danger. Of the demons in need of extraction, nearly sixty belonged to Michi. If removing docile, cooperative Matsu took the vast majority of their day—and surely Michi wouldn't make it home before midnight—was it truly possible to corral all the others?

Maybe.

But probably not.

If it came to that, if they _failed_ , how many people might be hurt in the process?

* * *

With Matsu in tow, they took a train out of Tokyo, not all the way back to Mushiyori, but just a handful of stops into the city's suburbs. There, they deboarded onto the deserted platform, then filed out of the station and onto the chilly street beyond.

In twenty minutes, another train would arrive—one that would take Yusuke, Kurama, and Michi home. Matsu and Hiei would travel on foot, a concept that boggled Michi's comprehension too thoroughly to be dwelled on for long. Moreover, she got the distinct impression Yusuke and Kurama could just as readily run back to Mushiyori. If not for her, trains wouldn't be part of the equation. Asato had obliquely said as much the day of their abysmal trip to Ryota's cabin, but it was only now, as Matsu hitched her bag higher up her shoulders and stared west toward Genkai's immeasurably distant compound, that the full weight of his meaning registered for Michi.

Demons—and perhaps properly trained humans—were impressive physical creatures, if nothing else.

The ghosting touch of Matsu's fingers across Michi's arm drew her back to herself. "Walk with me a moment?" the tiny apparition asked.

Michi hummed agreement and allowed Matsu to guide her down the sidewalk. They stopped a dozen meters away from the men, out of human earshot but probably not beyond that of a demon. The branches of a leafless tree stretched overhead, stark limbs clawing across the purple sky, gauzy with twilight.

Licking her lips, Matsu smoothed the flats of her tattooed palms across her thighs, pressing wrinkles from her surprisingly frilly skirt. Mustard worry tangled with mint distrust in her Loom. "How bad is it?"

"Come again?"

Matsu's nose crinkled, a tiny button atop her delicate features. "You need not enlighten me on the full reality of what's happening—I suspect you kept your story light on detail intentionally—but tell me the truth, please. How alarming is whatever threat brought you all here today?" Her gaze swept back toward the ex-Detectives, ink-stained fingers flexing in the folds of her skirt. "Your companions are not the sort who waste their time on trivial matters."

Michi breathed the night's cold air into her lungs, tasting rain and the aroma of a nearby udon shop on her tongue. How best to answer? "They're not wasting time," she said after a beat. "They're going to fix—" She searched for the right word, settling on: "Everything. You'll see. Then you'll be returned home."

"'Everything?' What a meaningless sentiment." Matsu tossed her head, a note of pleading entering her tone. "Again, I don't require specifics. I simply want to know: will I be going back?"

The meaning of that particular question didn't evade Michi's notice.

Such careful wording, emphasized by such starkly mustard threads. Matsu hadn't asked if she was 'coming back.' Her concern wasn't about resuming her life in Tokyo nor about inhabiting her warm, albeit mundane, apartment.

No. Those had not been her questions.

She'd asked not about returning, but about _going_. Back.

To Demon World.

With painful clarity, Michi recalled the reason Matsu had sought asylum here in Human World. A man who'd controlled her, abused her—nearly broken her. Some demon stronger even than this apparition the Detectives believed posed the greatest risk of all their transplants. In Matsu's hazel eyes, Michi saw fear of that man, fear that he was still waiting for her, set upon hurting her as he had done for so long before she got her halfway house application into the right hands.

Michi's heart ached in her chest, and her hands found Matsu's, curling over sweeping black lines and intricate symbols. She longed to promise Matsu the world, to promise her freedom.

But she couldn't lie.

She wouldn't break the faith Matsu had entrusted to her.

"I don't know. But not if they can help it." She jerked her chin toward the men, then summoned a smile that was all steel, sharp as Hiei's katana. "Not if _I_ can help it."

A sigh rattled through the space between them, as haunting and lonely as winter's dying breath. "Thank you, Michi."

For what?

Michi still wasn't sure five minutes later when Hiei and Matsu blurred into the night, carried through the dark by nothing more than their legs, impossibly fast. Nor was she sure during the train ride home, sitting a row ahead of Yusuke and Kurama, only half-listening to Yusuke's heated rant over the dreadfully slow speed of public transport and the wry, intentional jibes with which Kurama spurred him on. Not even when she fell into bed, a full hour after midnight, had she worked it out.

Thankful for the truth? For helping Matsu find a home here? For trying to protect that home?

All of the above?

What she did know, the one certainty that she could clutch close as sleep claimed her, was that if she had earned thanks of any kind, then she'd done right by Matsu. Now, she had to do the same for all the others. One way or another.

* * *

For a week, they ran withdrawals every day. Michi's protectors varied—the Detectives, Asato, and Kaito forming an ever-changing guard—but the process remained the same.

Gather as soon as her afternoon classes ended—on a subway line if they were staying local, at the train station if they were ranging farther abroad, sometimes in Asato's car if no good public route existed. Then a tension-filled trip, broiling with the uneasy question of what awaited them. A transplant like Matsu who'd simply missed their calls? A demon entrenched in a life they didn't want to give up? Or—the dreaded fear that kept Michi up even after hours on her feet—a fiend come undone at the seams?

To her boundless relief, most demons proved to fall in the former categories, and by the first Sunday, fourteen transplants had been sent on to Genkai's temple, off to protection behind hundreds of psychic seals. Only two incidents had transpired, both amongst Yana's charges.

In one, an apparition had simply bolted, racing off into the woods surrounding the town where he'd been placed. It was Kurama—serving as Yana's guardian instead of Michi's—who'd ultimately tracked the rogue down, trussed him up, and helped bundle him into Asato's car. Overall, the incident transpired with only minor violence—or, at least, so Michi had been assured.

The other did not go over quite so smoothly.

A burly brute of a demon, whose sheer strength placed him high on the Detectives' priority list, didn't take well to Yana's insistence that he leave behind the human man who'd become his lover. Three solid punches later, Yana had a shiner over his right eye darker than anything Michi had ever seen, Yusuke had a cracked rib, and the transplant was out cold, knocked into an unconsciousness it took him a full day to recover from.

Without seeing either transplant, Michi couldn't attest to the cause of their outbursts. White threads? Or merely the distraught desperation of people forcibly removed from their homes?

Her charges proved more tempered in their reactions, often asking her some variation on the same questions Matsu had. Would they be compelled back to Demon World? How much danger, exactly, were they actually in? Why in all three worlds were the ex-Spirit Detectives involved in this case?

As with Matsu, Michi stuck to the truth, but with every retelling, that truth rang hollower than it had before, more useless, more meaningless. Mere words and nothing more.

That is, right up until her transplants thanked her, right up until their Looms lit with lavender and aquamarine, glowing like bright beacons of trust. After that, after seeing their hope so vulnerably writ across their features, her words filled her with resolve.

She could not let these demons down.

She _would_ not. It just wasn't allowed.

* * *

AN: Proactive Michi is our new normal, and I'm so hype! Like last chapter, this one covered a lot of ground, so I hope that wasn't overly jarring, but this story is kicking into a different gear as the transplants become a bigger and bigger focus.

The moment between Hiei and Michi has become one of my favorite scenes of this whole story. I love exploring their dynamic.

A big, ol' heaping of thanks to last week's reviewers. You wonderful souls rock my socks: Anna, Guest, o-dragon, Aly Goode, Laina Inverse, ahyeon, MissIdeophobia, Toreh! (Also, I'm hoping to get some review responses out to people who have posed questions or just generally gone above and beyond in their reviews. I'm woefully behind on all of that.)

(Oh, and any resemblance between Matsu and Kalanie (from 'Once We've Fallen') is not entirely unintentional...)


	25. Brass and Brazen

The next Wednesday saw their team stretched thin.

With nearly twenty new, impatient demons housed at her shrine, Genkai had discovered keeping them separated, even keeled, and peaceful was an ever-mounting challenge. As a result, she'd summoned Asato and Kaito out to the compound to help establish a better housing scheme, and that left only the former Spirit Detectives to provide protection to both Michi and Yana.

Still, Yusuke wouldn't allow lesser numbers to gum up the works, and with a wise-cracking text, he divvied up their forces, assigning Kuwabara and Hiei to Yana, and himself and Kurama to Michi. Yana's team headed west, taking a train out into the mountains, even farther into the countryside than Genkai's remote shrine.

Michi, however, was in for a different routine. The demon she was set to collect—Akemi, a tall, broad-shouldered giant who made Kuwabara seem like a runt—had been housed in a town with no easy railway access, and so it wasn't a train that would carry her and the boys north.

That task belonged to Yusuke's car.

As Michi left class, her phone buzzed, a text from Yusuke flashing across the screen. _–Do they keep you trapped in there forever? Thought you got out at 2.–_

Wincing, Michi shouldered open the door of the lecture hall and emerged into the afternoon sunlight. _–Class ran long. Had to drop off an assignment. Where am I meeting you?–_

No sooner had she hit send than an arm snaked through her own, Runa's painted nails snagging her phone and tilting it so she could read Michi's messages. Panic, hot and fizzing and wild, lit in Michi's veins, and she powered down the screen with a desperate jab of her thumb, praying Runa hadn't seen anything incriminating.

"Whoa, there, Kuroki," Runa said, brows rising. "Got something to hide?"

"I—" She fumbled for an explanation, her tongue feeling swollen and cumbersome with nerves. "No. You just surprised me, is all."

Runa narrowed her eyes, long lashes obscuring her dark irises. "That's Shuichi you're texting, isn't it?"

Here, at least, Michi could answer with the truth. "Don't be absurd, Runa."

Her phone vibrated, buzzing between her clenched fingers loud enough to draw Runa's eye. Michi ignored it, shoving it into her pocket without checking Yusuke's response.

Retracting her arm, Runa braced her palms on her hips. "If it's not Shuichi, why do you look like you just saw a fiend straight out of Nanako's ghost stories?"

"Because you scared me, remember?"

Runa lofted an unimpressed eyebrow, her threads a mix of annoyed crimson and suspicious mint, but apparently accepting Michi's caginess for what it was, she merely shook her head and started down the lecture hall's steps. "Fine. Keep your secrets. You up for a study session before grabbing dinner with the girls?"

"I can't."

Crimson flared brighter across Runa's Loom, scorching away the mint. "Why not? Where have you been disappearing to every day?"

"I've been helping Asato out with some stuff for his job. It's a bunch of busywork. Nothing exciting."

Another text arrived, her phone quivering in her pocket. Again, Runa didn't miss it. Darn Yusuke's insistence. Did he possess not even a stitch of patience?

Sighing, her Loom stained entirely in scarlet, Runa picked up her pace, marching for the distant crosswalk into Nako Square like a robot soldier. "If you say so, but it sure would be nice if you could find time for us girls, too." They reached the street and halted, waiting for the light to change. "We miss you, you know."

Michi bit the inside of her cheek. This was why she'd tried to pull out of the halfway house over the holidays, because staying a part of it had driven this wedge between her and the girls. There were too many secrets, too many lies and deceptions, too many truths too preposterous to share. But she knew better now. Abandoning Genkai and the Detectives meant more demons might end up like Ryota.

So she had to figure out a balance.

Somehow.

"I'm sorry," she said as the crossing signal lit up. "I'll have time soon."

"Sure you will."

"I mean it, Runa."

"I know you think you do, Meech. Trust me." Runa paused, hiking her bag up her shoulder. The flow of traffic parted around them, a sea of Looms flickering across Michi's vision as pedestrians gave them a wide berth. "Just not quite sure it's actually true."

Then, lifting a hand in a cursory wave, Runa turned heel and slipped off into the crowd, gone before Michi could summon anything beyond a muted sense of shock. Dumb of her, probably, to be surprised. After all, hadn't she known for months that she'd been drifting away from the girls? Really, if anything it was a shock it had taken Runa so long to call her on it.

But that didn't lessen the sting.

The sharp honk of a car horn at her back shattered her revere, and a second later, her phone buzzed yet again. Gritting her teeth, she dug the device from her pocket and keyed it open. Three texts from Yusuke waited. The most recent of which explained the next raging horn behind her.

– _Oy. Kid. Get your ass in my car before I get a ticket for live parking here.–_

She whirled, discovering a sedan parked just past the crosswalk. Yusuke stuck his head out the window as their eyes met, leaning half his torso dramatically out the door. "Hurry up, dang it!" A flash of red beyond his shoulders indicated Kurama already seated in the passenger seat, but Michi still hesitated a moment longer, glancing back the way Runa had gone. For a fanciful moment, she imagined abandoning all of this and racing after Runa. She could tell her the truth, come clean, fix the damage she'd wrought—

Except she couldn't.

Because Yusuke and Kurama were waiting. And, though he didn't know it yet, so, too, was Akemi.

Heart in her throat, she stuffed her phone into her bag, hefted the strap higher, and strode for the car.

* * *

The sedan, it turned out, belonged to Keiko, not Yusuke, a fact Michi learned only after questioning the origami crane hanging from the rearview mirror on a piece of delicate string. His Loom flushing with silver bright as sterling, Yusuke admitted he'd pilfered Keiko's keys for this mission, then he jacked up the radio's volume, drowning out any further observations on Michi's behalf with pounding bassline.

Ultimately, a drive without conversation wasn't the worst option Yusuke could've chosen. It gave Michi a chance to type out two dozen different apologies to Runa. Yet none felt quite right, and she ended up deleting one after another, sending them off into oblivion.

An hour later, when they at last reached Akemi's apartment building, Michi was only too happy to scramble from the car, abandoning her phone and schoolbag in the backseat. Stepping into the cold air, she dragged a hand through her straightened hair, then looked up to the distant fifth floor flat where Akemi lived.

The apartment's balcony door was open, cracked despite the chill. Strange.

Straightening her shoulders, Michi started for the steps. "Come on. Let's do this."

Yusuke stifled a yawn and loped to her side, but Kurama followed more sedately and waited at the foot of the stairs while Michi buzzed Akemi's unit. Silence answered. Frowning, she tried again. Still nothing.

She glanced up as if she could see his balcony door from beneath the stoop's protective awning. It had been open, hadn't it? Then why wasn't he answering?

"Kurama, did you happen to be the one who reached out to him?"

"Afraid not. I believe that was Kaito." Footsteps announced that he'd joined them on the stoop, and she stepped out of the way as he reached for the door's handle. "If I'm remembering correctly, Akemi answered only to hang up when he learned Kaito was asking him to return to Genkai's. It's possible his Loom hasn't been heavily impacted—he did, after all, pick up—but how does that align with your recollection of his temperament?"

"Wouldn't be out of the ordinary." She fiddled with the zipper of her jacket, recalling Akemi's Loom. It had often been dyed in bold blues, but his temper had been a quick, ephemeral thing, appearing like a flash fire and fading away to ash just as quickly. "He's a bit volatile. Kind-hearted, ultimately, but no stranger to rash anger."

Yusuke groaned. "Well that gets us nowhere, then." He glared at the panel of buzzers, then jabbed Akemi's button a dozen times in rapid succession. When no answer came, he tossed up his hands. "Can you get us in there, Mr. Master Thief?"

Well.

Perhaps Michi should've seen that coming.

Her gaze dropped to Kurama's hand on the door, appraising it in a whole new light. "Is breaking in really the right plan?"

Pale navy spread through Kurama's Loom like a wave of resigned acceptance. "We can't leave him here, so since he's not answering, a little lock tampering is our only recourse."

Nose crinkled in resistance, Michi nodded. "Have at it, then, I guess."

Turning back to the door, Kurama delved long fingers into the locks of his hair. They reemerged in a position she'd seen once before, thumb and pointer pinched as if clutching something between their pads, but whatever it was he held remained obscured behind the set of his shoulders, and a moment later, when the door swung open beneath his palm, she was no closer to working out the mystery than she'd been prior.

Propping the door against his elbow, he waved her and Yusuke inside. "It should go without saying that we should proceed warily."

In case Akemi had come unraveled. It wasn't a thought Michi wanted to dwell on, and she wasted no time leading the men to the elevator and up to the fifth floor. The quicker they discovered Akemi's status, the quicker Yusuke could cease curling his hands into those all too threatening fists currently hanging at his side and the quicker the coiled tension could leave Kurama's frame, returning him to his mild-mannered self rather than the hunting fox that stalked at her heels.

As she halted on Akemi's threshold, the demon's Loom swam into view. Her hands went clammy within her sleeves. "He's here," she whispered.

Yusuke drew up short. "You can see him?"

She forced a nod. "Some of his threads are white. Not many." One by one, she unfurled her clenched fingers, clawing for calm. No need to panic. He wasn't that bad off. They could get this situation under control. "His Loom looks a bit like Taki's the day you went to his apartment. Off, but not yet cause for full-fledged alarm."

"But he did ignore the buzzer," Kurama said.

That she couldn't argue with.

Proud of how steady her hand remained, she rapped on the door, but after three tries, she knew knocking would prove no more fruitful than ringing the buzzer had been, and so she stepped clear as Kurama once more worked his magic on the door. This time, she angled herself so she kept his hand on the knob in clear view, and yet she still couldn't discern what he'd done. One second, the door was locked and impassable, and the next, a soft click sounded as the tumbler turned.

His viridian gaze flitted her way, that muted navy still playing across his cheeks, joined now by a tense, apprehensive mossy green. "If you don't mind, I'd prefer Yusuke or I take point."

She hesitated. "I don't think he'll attack." She pitched her voice low, but threaded it with as much firm defiance as she could muster. "We're not dealing with anything like Ryota here."

"Even still, it's best to be vigilant."

Recognizing there'd been no convincing him, she shrugged. "Fine, but give me a chance to talk him down before anyone starts throwing their weight around."

Behind her, Yusuke cracked his knuckles. "You got it, kid. One chance."

Kurama cast Yusuke a sharp frown, then turned the knob and eased the door inward. He crossed the threshold like a ghost, gliding on feet so silent she hardly believed he touched the ground at all. In his wake, feeling clumsy as a drunk, Michi called, "Akemi? It's Michi Kuroki. I know you're home—"

A flurry of movement preceded the emergence of a towering shadow. It slanted down the entry hall, pooling ahead of Akemi like a monstrous shade, and Michi thought, just for a moment, that she spotted a tensed fist, raised and ready before such detail was lost to the dark.

Kurama extended a splayed palm backward, finding her elbow and holding her in place. His right arm rose, and she lost track of his hand's exact motions as he used his torso to block her sight yet again. It had to be intentional, the way he kept hiding his powers. For whatever reason, he didn't want her to understand—didn't want her to see what he truly was.

But any frustration over his evasiveness fell away as Akemi loomed properly into view. He was even larger in person than he'd been in her memory, as if his sheer size had been too much for her mind to comprehend and it had shrunk him accordingly. The glimpse of a fist she'd spotted proved accurate. He'd hefted both in front of him, his tree-trunk legs bending into a fighting stance.

"I told that human brat I'm not leaving," he sneered. "Didn't realize he'd send some goons to try to muscle me out of here. Doesn't matter, though. Still not going."

His promise of mere moments before apparently forgotten, Yusuke shoved past Michi, jostling her into Kurama's back as he went. "Oh, is that so, tough guy? You really think you stand a chance in hell of beating me?"

Akemi's lips drew back, revealing fang-like incisors. They were passable enough for human when he was his usual stoic self, but now, as he snarled like a beast, they could've been ripped from the jaws of a veritable tiger for all their ferocity. "That or die trying."

A sudden shift in the air nearly tore Michi's breath away. Her skin crawled, her nerves rioting as her heartbeat leapt to a galloping pace. Every instinct she possessed suddenly screamed for her to bolt—to run and run far and never stop.

It was as though the very fabric of the world had been set on fire—or, perhaps, charged with electricity. An unnamable energy crackled and sparked and scorched against her, raising gooseflesh across her arms and shrinking the space of the hall as if to the size of a matchbox. Before that oppressive force, it was hard to so much as breathe—hard to even think.

Yet the fact that Akemi hadn't addressed her, that his defensive, aggressive focus remained on the men, sat wrong with her, burning past the instinctive riot of her senses. Seizing that peculiarity like a drowning swimmer might cling to a rock at the water's surface, she wriggled free of Kurama's grasp, slid around his sleek frame, and edged ahead of Yusuke. "Enough," she declared. "Both of you, back down. This isn't some stupid, macho pissing match."

A bolt of lime in Yusuke's neon Loom announced his surprise, but Kurama wasn't nearly as rattled, and he clamped a hand over her shoulder, readying to yank her backward—

Only to falter.

To recognize the same shift in Akemi that Michi had.

The odd electric current in the air didn't abate, but Akemi's stance softened ever so slightly. The tangled mess of crimson and black and mustard in his Loom ebbed, confused greens swirling into being. Through it all, tendrils of white flickered and danced, writhing through his threads like toxic snakes.

"Hey, Akemi," she said softly.

"Michi?" A question, but not one aimed at her. Rather it appeared to dig inward, past his seething swirl of emotions, delving into his memory, dragging recollection of her to the surface.

His left fist uncurled.

She eased a smile across her lips, willing it to reach her eyes. "I know Kaito can be something of a know-it-all, but a brat? Not sure that lands."

Akemi's snarl loosened, wide lips closing over gleaming canines. "He tried to force me to leave. Said I have to go back."

"You do. But not all the way to Demon World. Just to Genkai's." Silently, she prayed that Kurama knew enough to trust her, to not fight her on her next move. Unwinding the tension coiling Akemi's body would be a tightrope act, one she knew she could land—but not if Kurama yanked her off balance.

The hope heavy on her tongue, she stepped forward.

Kurama's hand fell away.

Just like that, the situation was hers to control—and control it she did. With slow, steady strides, she crossed to Akemi and enveloped his right fist in her much smaller hands, prying apart his fingers, and all the while, keeping up a soothing stream of explanations, the same half-story she'd spun for ten demons so far. As with Taki, it seemed her presence was enough to steady Akemi, and soon the white in his Loom had been consumed by bright blue, Akemi's trust in her purging the corruption from his threads.

In twenty minutes, she'd convinced him that leaving was the necessary choice. In thirty, he'd packed a bag. After forty, they were on the sidewalk and bundling into Keiko's car.

From there, Yusuke drove them fifteen minutes back toward Mushiyori, then pulled over on the edge of a park. The sun had begun setting while they were at Akemi's apartment, and long slanting shadows arced across the grass, cast by looming trees.

Akemi took his time gathering his bag from the trunk and staring back the way they'd come, off toward his abandoned home. Yusuke loitered beside him, one hand splayed atop the trunk's open hatch. He feigned nonchalance with relative ease, but tension lined his Loom in streaks of goldenrod. If Akemi tried to bolt, Yusuke would be ready for him; Akemi wouldn't make it far.

For her part, Michi stayed in the car. Her task was over. The rest of Akemi's transport was Kurama's responsibility. As soon as Akemi was done making his silent goodbyes, they'd be on their way, sprinting off to Genkai's in that unbelievably inhuman way Michi still hadn't come to grips with.

Sighing, she tapped her passcode into her phone and reread the text she'd been halfway through composing when they'd arrived at Akemi's. The apology within it struck her as flimsier and more stilted than she'd remembered. Disgusted, she backspaced every last character.

"Michi?"

She jolted upright, uncurling from the bent over position she'd slid into on the ride, and found Kurama peeking in through the open door of the front passenger seat. Words came stilted and awkward. "Yeah?"

He smiled, and baby blue calm washed through his threads. "No interest in sitting up here?"

Oh. Right.

A blush warmed her cheeks as she slid across the backseat and out the door on his side. He stepped clear of the front seat, but she didn't take it immediately. Instead, she looked up at him, striving for a smile that could dream to match even a sliver of his.

"Thanks for trusting me back there," she whispered.

His low chuckle curled like a pool of simmering warmth in her belly. "You asked for a shot at handling him. Least we could do was let you take it."

"But you didn't want to," she said, "and yet you still didn't stop me. It doesn't seem like it's in your nature to let others dictate situations you'd usually steer. Thank you for putting that aside. Thank you for giving me a chance."

His smile dimmed, the light fading infinitesimally from his eyes.

But she reached for his hand before he could speak, lacing her fingers around his—same as he'd done to her as they left Genkai's shrine the week prior. "Accept the gratitude, Kurama. Just this once."

Brows drawn together, he glanced down at their entwined fingers. He swept his thumb over her knuckles. Once. Twice. Then he nodded, a singular dip of his chin. "You're welcome, Michi." He squeezed her hand and stepped back, the twinkle returning to his jewel-like gaze. "Just this once."

So be it.

She'd take what she could get.

* * *

"Here's a question for you," Yusuke announced as he put Keiko's sedan into gear and eased out of the parking lot. He'd thrown himself into the driver's seat as soon as Kurama and Akemi blurred into the night, and now he drummed his fingertips against the wheel, driving with two in hands in a way that somehow managed to strike her as less safe than driving with none at all. "You knew from the moment you met me that those weird Ties connect Kurama and me, right? So why the hell did you bother asking me to lie to him for you? Didn't you know my loyalty to him would override any promise I'd make?"

She frowned at his ever-shifting hands. Well, those were quite the queries, indeed. "That was more than one question, Yusuke."

He tossed his head back, his laughter pealing through the car's compact cabin. Ahead, the street curved, following the rolling edge of a hill, and with preternatural ease, Yusuke spun the wheel accordingly, though Michi could've sworn there was no way he could see the road.

"One question, multiple questions—who cares? The point doesn't change. What in the ever-living fuck made you think I'd lie to my… what'd you call us? Stringbrothers or something?"

"Threadbrothers."

He smacked a palm atop the steering wheel. "Yup. That's the one."

Stalling for time, Michi toed off her shoes and drew her feet onto the seat, thankful she'd opted for jeans today rather than a dress. "It wasn't my most logical moment, I'll grant you that."

Another bright peal of laughter, echoed by zinging teal and shining cobalt bursting through his Loom. "No kidding."

"Honestly, though, I didn't realize that 'Shuichi' was involved in all of this. Clearly, I shouldn't have been so stubbornly unaware, but I was. And I thought, however ridiculously, that your involvement with Spirit World must be as secret as my own. If so, it didn't seem that farfetched to think you'd be willing to keep what you'd seen to yourself." She propped her chin atop her knees. "The Ties That Bind should've made me realize how idiotic that was… But again, stubbornly unaware and all that."

"Gotcha," he said.

"Seriously?"

Because she wasn't sure _she_ got it. Not really. How could she have been so completely and absolutely naïve? Of course, Yusuke and Shuichi had both been part of all this. Of course, Yusuke wouldn't keep such a vast secret from his Threadbrother on behalf of some girl he hardly knew. Why had she ever thought any different?

"Sure do," Yusuke answered, his gaze sliding her way. "You didn't want your bubble to burst."

He spoke with more concrete surety than she'd ever heard. He was always boisterous, his every action seemingly haloed in confidence—but this was different. This wasn't bombastic swagger. This was just knowledge, stated as if it were as factual as the rise and fall of the sun.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

His grin split wide. "Kurama's the same damn way. Gets his sights set on some version of reality, and then refuses to accept other possibilities."

"Are we talking about the same Kurama? That doesn't sound anything like him at all." She rocked her chin sideways, angling so she could more properly make out Yusuke's profile. "If I've taken just one thing away from these last weeks, it's that he's constantly thinking ahead, plotting plans and sub-plans, first choices and second choices. All he does is entertain possibilities."

Grudgingly, Yusuke nodded. "Okay, sure. But that's not what I was saying. My phrasing was probably shit, so let's try again." For the first time, his hands went still on the wheel. The electric intensity of his threads changed shade, turning navy and mossy green in deep contemplation. "I'm not claiming Kurama doesn't have plots on plots on plots stocked up in that gigantic brain of his. He totally does. Look up 'overthinker' in the dictionary, and I'm ninety-nine percent sure he'll be staring back at you from the page—and, just so we're clear, I know overthinker probably isn't a real word, but I don't give two shits." His gaze narrowed on the road. "Point is, yeah, Kurama's brain never shuts up, but there's a reason for that—and it's because once he puts his devious, crafty mind to something, he doesn't know how to leave the damn thing alone. What's that saying? Like a dog with a bone? That's him. Except, you know, a fox instead."

"And that relates to me how?"

"It's why you didn't think I'd rat you out. You had your mind set on whatever version of the future you'd dreamed up. I'm guessing something along the lines of some cutesy, cliché family with perfect Shuichi, yeah? But that was only possible if he was _just_ Shuichi." Again, he cut his gaze to her, apparently steering with instinct alone. "You wanted out of all this demon mumbo jumbo, and you thought Shuichi was your escape route. A guy whose Loom you could barely see. Bet you could almost pretend you were normal with him, right?"

With his every word, whatever defense she'd planned to mount fell farther out of reach. Here was another ex-Detective she'd sold short. She'd never imagined all his blustering charm hid perception this piercing, and yet here she sat, listening as he captured in not-quite-eloquent words precisely why she'd so desperately hoped he wouldn't breathe so much as a whisper of her powers to Shuichi.

She'd wanted that future, exactly as he'd outlined. The promise of it had blinded her as thoroughly as her territory ever had. Only, unlike the Loom of Life, that prospect had been nothing but an illusion.

Truly, it had never existed at all.

"That was your bubble," he added, and then, not sounding like he meant it in the slightest, he tacked on, "Sorry for popping it."

"Like I said, I should've known you would."

He shrugged. "Hey, I get it. I mean, until I told him about seeing you at Taki's, Kurama hadn't even considered the possibility that you were anything but a regular, run-of-the-mill human." He paused a moment, jaw working silently, as if he were chewing over a thought he wasn't quite sure he should say. Then, to neither of their surprise, he bit the bullet anyway. "In case it wasn't clear, Kurama had a scheme for you. Not his best one probably, and he had to change it up a shit ton once we knew you were a psychic, but it was a good plan—even if he did screw it up in the end."

And, according to Yusuke himself, if Kurama had a goal once, then he still did.

Like a dog with a bone.

Or a fox in a hen house.

When her silence held, Yusuke huffed. "Look, talk to Kurama, alright? Without being a naggy bitch this time. I know you think you have the full story, but that fox might as well be an onion. He's got a stupid number of layers, and he's not so keen on peeling them back." Yusuke's Loom flashed with cobalt as his grin went crooked. "And in some cases—" meaning, quite clearly, hers "—waterworks tend to happen."

Ignoring that jab, she rewound to the one that had come before it. "Why, pray tell, are you under the impression I've been a naggy bitch?"

He snorted, whether at the question or her intentional stuffy way of putting it, she couldn't be sure. "What? Do you think we don't talk? Even Kurama has to vent about his crap sometimes. We're each other's sounding boards. Kuwabara's, too. Hell, even Hiei shows up when he's got real shit to work out." He uncurled his right hand from the steering wheel, waggling his pinky finger in her direction, utterly without shame as he described the bond between him and his friends. "It's not Kuwabara's dumb pinky string of love, but we've got your stupid Ties, don't we?"

Jutting his chin forward, he finished, "Anyway, 'naggy bitch' wasn't really how Kurama put it, but sounded to me like that's what it boiled down to. Word to the wise—badgering isn't the best route to a guy's heart."

Michi's breath juddered in her lungs. He'd spoken with the same easy assuredness as he had earlier. Earnest and real, not showboating or playacting.

She fumbled for words. "Who says I'm still interested in his heart?"

Another snort, this one pure derision. "According to Hiei, _your_ 'fickle, feeble human heart' hasn't moved on yet—and from the way he said it, didn't seem like those were his words."

Well.

Maybe the Detectives really did tell each other everything.

Goodness, she hoped not.

* * *

AN: Oh, Yusuke, you blunt, overly perceptive punk.

Yusuke will never not be a blast to write. He's so much fun, packed with so much personality and dimension, and I just love him to pieces. (Hence the other fic I started a few weeks ago, 'The Unknown Grounds', which is Yusuke centric. The ending scene with Yusuke in this chapter was a huge reason why I couldn't get TUG out of my head. I just _needed_ to write something about Yusuke.

Next week, we get TONS of Kurama and Michi time and some further exploration of the new dynamic between them. I'm looking forward to sharing it!

Endless, boundless, to-the-moon-and-back thanks to all of you who reviewed last chapter! I love hearing from you all, and I'll be sending a whole slew of review responses this afternoon, because I owe you lovely souls some one-on-one recognition. In the meantime, shout outs to: Deanna Price, o-dragon, Guest, Laina Inverse, WistfulSin, MissIdeophobia, Shell1331, UzumakiRaven, LadyEllesmere, xanaldy, ahyeon, and ookawa!


	26. Violet in Ultra

By the end of the second week of extractions, day-to-day reality caught up to Michi.

As the semester progressed, her workload was growing, readings and essays piling up as she pushed off assignments in favor of prepping for the next transplant withdrawal. Texts from the girls pinged into her phone almost hourly, asking if she was okay, where she was, when they'd next grab dinner. Or really, texts from Yurie and Nanako. There'd been nothing from Runa—they'd barely even seen each other on campus—but more than once the other girls hinted at Runa's suspicion of Michi's further her reinvolvement with Shuichi, and her disappointment therein.

Michi couldn't avoid concrete answers on that subject forever. That much was clear.

But there was leeway between now and forever, and she was clinging to now.

Regardless, even with her homework gathering dust and the girls growing worried, Michi didn't know how to scale back her commitment to the halfway house's extraction efforts. Recalibrating her time seemed incomprehensible. How could she worry about classwork when one of her transplants might be succumbing to the white threads at that very moment? How could trivial nonsense possibly measure up to the importance of the halfway house's affairs? How could she—

"You're not sleeping enough."

Michi startled, pulling free of the quagmire of her thoughts with a jolt as the subway lurched around a turn in the tunnel. Kurama sat beside her, hands folded neatly in his lap, eyes supposedly angled forward, though she suspected they hadn't been a moment prior.

"I'm—"

"Exhausted." His smile curled into being, faint but firm. "You've got bags under your eyes, and you nodded off three separate times on our trip out."

Oh.

She hadn't realized he'd been paying attention.

That morning—the second Saturday since they'd begun pulling transplants—she'd claimed a row of their train west for herself, balling her jacket up between her head and the window and attempting to get a few readings done. As the mountains swept in around them, her book had fallen shut and all she'd succeeded in accomplishing was a few hours sleep. 'Nodded off' was a generously favorable way of putting it.

Kurama had sat a row back, beside Yusuke, and Kaito had taken the row across the aisle from them, though he'd never once untucked his nose from the spine of his book, and after they'd collected Nishi—who'd possessed the most wrathful, virulently white Loom Michi had seen since Taki's—Yusuke had parted ways with them, leading the volatile demon off on foot. Once they'd made the return trip to Mushiyori, Kurama and Kaito had both boarded the subway with her, but Kaito had peeled off six subway stops back, headed to his own apartment and an afternoon spent avoiding Yana and Asato.

Now, only Michi and Kurama remained, seated together, surrounded by the crush of the transit system. It almost felt like the days when they'd first interacted, when he was a mystery with a pale Loom, a curiosity she'd been unable to resist.

"It seems I've been overestimating how many hours there are in a day," she admitted.

"Ah."

She rubbed a hand across her forehead, sighing. "But I'll get through it. Promise."

His fingers tapped against his thigh, his Loom darkening with hazy navy. "When Asato first outlined his plan, you'd committed to four extractions a week. I can't help but notice you've assisted us thirteen days straight."

"And it's still not enough. It's—"

"It _is_ enough, Michi. More than. Take a break. Focus on your real life for a few days. We can keep the ship afloat in your absence." He darted his viridian gaze her way. "You're more use to us at your best than you could ever be worn so thin."

"Not helping… It feels like wasting time."

Worse than that, it felt like letting people down. Her transplants. The ex-Detectives. Genkai. Asato. So many souls counting on her to aide them—to protect them.

When she'd told Asato she could only manage assisting them part of the week, she'd still been clinging to some half-thought out belief that both halves of her life were equally important, but on that she'd been wrong. Hadn't she? How could university assignments and dinner dates with the girls begin to rival the significance of saving transplants?

As if he knew the turn her mind had taken, Kurama shook his head resolutely. "I assure you, proper rest is never a waste." The firm press of his smile softened. "Asato was right that your presence helps with extractions, but by no means does that mean you _must_ be with us for every single one."

"I know that."

And Michi did.

But somehow, it wasn't the comfort he meant it to be.

The railcar rattled into a station, and she realized belatedly that it was his, yet he made no immediate move to stand. Instead, he asked, his threads awash in watered-down goldenrod, "Any interest in an early dinner? I'm afraid neither Yusuke, Kuwabara, nor myself have managed to fill our fridge in days."

Michi swallowed roughly, sure that if she could see her own Loom, it would be as stained in nervous goldenrod as his. "Yeah," she said softly, words almost lost to the subway car's engine as it started up again. "I'd like that."

* * *

Just one stop farther down the line, Michi guided Kurama to her favorite sushi place. They'd visited together once before, in the early days of dating, and though she hadn't realized it until that moment, as they slid into a secluded booth, it had also been where he'd picked up food the night he came to ease her migraine.

It seemed his thoughts had gone down the same path, and as she scanned down the menu, confirming her most beloved maki were still listed, he cleared his throat and asked, "How have your headaches been?"

"Par for the course."

He cocked his head, crimson locks spilling over his shoulder. She refused to stare.

"Meaning?"

"They're common enough." Staring at her menu wasn't nearly as effectual a blinder as she'd hoped, and it was impossible to keep from glancing up at him. "Not debilitating, but I don't think I've fallen asleep without one yet this week."

"I never realized they were quite so routine." His eyes glittered like gemstones, soft with a sadness that made her heart climb into her throat. "You hid them well."

"No, I didn't." Willing her voice not to crack, she added, "They weren't commonplace with you."

To her surprise, that blunt revelation earned only a soft sigh, an exhale that sent shivers down her spine. "Michi…"

"Sorry," she tacked on quickly. Keeping an eye out for their server, she said, "I didn't mean anything by that. It's just the truth. When I was spending nights with you, my territory usually quieted enough that by the time I returned home, any headaches roused throughout the day had died off, and after that, the wards around my apartment were enough to keep the worst of the Loom of Life at bay."

He set aside his menu, not even pretending to read it. "Our time together in the last weeks hasn't accomplished the same thing?"

She shook her head. "Between all the other people around and the white threads of the transplants, your Loom tends to get lost." She fidgeted with the plate set before her, centering it with finicky precision on the table's carved surface. "There's too much else going on. Too much else I need to focus on."

Not to mention, she couldn't allow herself to dwell on him. Doing so hurt too much. The strange, faltering peace between them smacked too strongly of treacherous ground, threatening to pitch her onto her butt at any moment. Regardless of Yusuke's claims about Kurama's dogged tenacity, she couldn't help fearing one more misstep would push him away for good. Which meant every word, every look, every second spent in his presence was a test—one she'd fail if she weren't careful.

And she hated failing.

Watching her with a muted frown, Kurama murmured, "That's a shame."

She shrugged. "Like I said, these headaches aren't any different than the ones I've dealt with for six years. My contact with the white threads usually isn't prolonged enough to have lasting effects, so it's just… my life."

The arrival of their waitress delayed his response, but as the girl dipped a polite bow, delivered them each a glass of water, and readied her notepad, Michi realized all her scanning of the menu had gotten her precisely nowhere and she had no clue which of her favorite rolls to order. Kurama, however, wasn't so unprepared. While Michi fumbled, he scooped up his menu, rattled off four maki for them to split, and ordered hot sake to boot. In seconds, their server had scuttled off and they were alone once more.

Leaning back in his seat, Kurama arranged himself comfortably, one foot grazing hers beneath the table before ghosting away. She would've bet he wanted to poke further into the matter of her headaches, but he seemed to read the tension knit through her every muscle and deftly changed tactics. "How fares everything else? Classes and the like?"

She raised both brows. "Is this some scheduled check-in I wasn't aware of? Did Genkai task you with sleuthing out my status? Or was it Asato?"

His threads bloomed with pale cobalt mirth. "I'm merely curious." A wry tilt upturned the left corner of his lips. "Can't you verify that easily enough?"

Now that he'd pointed it out, yes, she could. Faded emerald gleamed through the fall of his Loom, tangling with the cobalt. Other shades lingered, too. Gone was the nervous yellow that had appeared as he'd asked her here. In its stead, she found further blues—the watered-down teal of happiness and powdery shades she thought were his Loom's sign of contentment—as well as a wash of amethyst affection.

And, last of all, echoed in that teasing smile still adorning his lips, she spotted lilac.

Flirtation.

"Among other things."

The laugh that earned set her nerves on fire.

"Should I take your evasion of the question as a sign not all is well?"

Rolling her eyes at his stilted phrasing, she answered in kind. "I wouldn't draw the inference for that reason, but the conclusion itself isn't particularly far off."

A splash of faintest coral ate away at his previous good humor, concern smoothing out the laugh lines about his eyes. "Oh?"

She squirmed, accidentally knocking her foot against his and quickly scrambling upright, creating space. "Listening to me whine can't possibly be how you wanted to spend your afternoon."

"Strictly speaking, no, it's not what I might have envisioned." A deep flush of imperial purple swelled across his Loom, so stark and clear and vivid she almost dared believe he'd willed it there intentionally. Desire. Lust. Sheer _want_. Then his easy smile returned, coral sweeping back into place. "But if you need to vent—about anything at all—I'm happy to provide an ear."

Michi grimaced and reached for her water glass. "Does being a fox demon mean you have more than the usual two? Because I think your current pair will probably end up tired."

For a moment, he startled into silence, lime zipping across the planes of his cheeks like electric shocks, but as one heartbeat stretched into two, he devolved into a bout of ringing, melodic mirth, pressing a hand over his mouth as he did so, as if he could hide how thoroughly she'd amused him. It was the first time in weeks she'd seen him laugh so unabashedly. "Alas, it does not. There's just the two." His grin was positively impish, his Loom dark with amused cobalt. "Though they come in two varieties."

She choked on a sip of water. "Do I want to know what that's supposed to mean?"

He lofted one elegant shoulder into a shrug. "It's not my purview to answer that for you. But if you'd like clarification, I can explain."

Puzzled, but not off put, by this new, strangely mischievous Kurama, Michi smothered a laugh of her own and shook her head. "Let's hold off on explaining how in the heck you can have 'varieties' of ears."

"Fair enough. We were meant to be discussing you, after all." Another flash of that wicked grin. "Actually, no, I've got that wrong. I'm meant to be providing an ear—as many as I can—while you whine, is that right?"

"Who are you and what have you done with Kurama?"

The sly twist of his lips turned his features sinfully handsome. "I don't think you've asked the question you meant to."

In a flurry, their waitress returned, delivering a platter of delicate, colorful sushi rolls and a ceramic flask of sake, steam wafting from its mouth in lazy curls. As the girl beat a retreat, Kurama poured Michi a small cup, seemingly content to conceal his meaning until she caved and demanded it from him.

Once he'd finished filled her glass, she returned the favor, frowning all the while. "Then what was I trying to ask?"

"You're looking for Shuichi. Not Kurama."

The flask clattered back to the table, slipping from her fingers. A darting grab by Kurama kept it standing, and their hands brushed as she withdrew. Blushing, she shoved a curl behind her ear and met his shining, astute gaze.

No sense denying it.

Not when he'd so aptly nailed what she hadn't even realized herself.

"So I was."

"Correct me if I'm wrong," he said, transferring three sushi rolls to his plate with nimbly held chopsticks, "but didn't you ask that I simply be Kurama from here on?"

"I did."

He splayed an open palm toward his own chest. "Consider it done, then."

She studied him a moment longer, trying to spot the ways he differed from her memory of Shuichi. The variances were slight, little more than subtle ripples. A smoldering fire in his eyes, hinting at the biting wit beneath. A more willing openness to expose his tests and mental games. And, not so subtle at all, that flush of imperial purple that had risen in his Loom once more, bared—she was now quite sure—with unflinching intention.

"Did Genkai teach you that trick?" she asked, serving herself a few rolls, then pouring a small amount of soy sauce onto her side plate.

His face gave away nothing as he sipped his sake. "Which trick would that be?"

"Showing me your emotions on purpose."

"Is such a thing possible?"

Caught with a mouthful of rice, Michi narrowed her eyes at him and chewed through the rest. "I don't believe for a single second that you're not trying to use my territory to your advantage."

"Am I sending a particular message at the moment?" The deep, ripe plum spread further, pooling through his Loom in streaks like the last fading moments of twilight. "Elaborate." His grin flashed. "I'm curious."

"No, you're not," she said flatly, striving—and failing—to keep any trace of laughter from her voice. "You're amused—at yourself. You're determined. You're playing coy. And you're…" She shook her head, unable to say the rest aloud, unable to name that riotous plum for what it was.

"I'm what, Michi?"

"You know what."

Quite suddenly, entirely without warning, the humor dissipated from his Loom. His smile fell away, the mischievous, teasing light in his eyes giving way to a look as serious as he'd ever given her. Oh so judiciously, he set down his chopsticks, movements efficient and controlled, not so much as a drop of energy wasted.

"Michi," he said softly, voice silken, almost timid, "my feelings for you haven't changed, but I recognize the privilege with which I can say that. I understand that I've had months where you've had only weeks to internalize the ways in which our lives intersect. And—most importantly, I'm sure—I can concede the point you made the night you discovered the truth. We both kept secrets; neither of us deny that. But as you so rightly asserted, the degree of perceived risk involved for each of us had we been honest was vastly unequal. All that notwithstanding, my hope for us hasn't been altered."

A touch a sadness, pale as faintest pink, tinged the threads strung across his shoulders. "With that said, I'm also aware that you may not feel the same. Perhaps you never will again. I can respect that. I _want_ to respect that. But even still, feigning my feelings are not what they are seems an act in futility." His gaze dropped from hers, and he drew in a breath so deep she could spot how it expanded his chest within his black sweater. "Here, then, is what I ask: when you know— _if_ you know—what sort of future might be possible between us, tell me of it so I might adjust accordingly."

"Kurama…" She dragged a hand through her hair. "That sounds like a torturous way to live."

Silent laughter creased around his eyes. "There are worse tortures."

Were there? She wasn't so sure.

But really, did it matter in light of what she already knew?

Swiftly, before she lost her nerve, she gulped down a warm, bracing sip of sake, then asked, "What if I can already answer that question?"

Trepidation flitted across his Loom in strands of mottled green. "So quick on your feet," he said, the compliment brittle as spun sugar. He'd gone impossibly still, every muscle in his body tensed, though whether for fight or flight she couldn't readily say. "It wasn't intended to be a pop quiz."

"I know."

Michi bit her inner cheek. It felt for all the world as though she stood on the edge of a precipice, a thin lip on the side of an endless cliff. Weeks ago, on that night at Genkai's, as the party devolved into hell around her, Michi had grabbed hold of this crevice and wedged herself against the rock, stopping a fall that could've splattered her like so much nothing. But now, staring across the table at Kurama, she'd slid her toes back to the brink of that crag, and if she said the words building in her throat, she'd be throwing herself over the brim once and for all.

There'd be no more handholds to save her, no more fresh bluffs to cling to. Just that descent.

And, if she was lucky, Kurama's hand to clutch as she went.

The silence dragged.

Then, too fretful to even feel shame at the waver in her voice, she confessed, "I miss you. I've seen you practically every day for the last two weeks, and yet I miss you. Constantly. But I don't want to miss you forever. What I _do_ want is to get back to how we were. It's just that… I'm still figuring out how to get there."

She paused only long enough for another gulp of sake, draining the last of her cup. Without interrupting, he filled it again.

"I keep finding myself looking for Shuichi and instead discovering Kurama. Goodness, you caught me doing it twenty minutes ago. It's not inherently a bad thing. You're only doing what I asked you to—but it _is_ confusing. You're _you_ , but you're also not. Sometimes it makes my head spin."

He nodded, dropping his chin in a single bob of acknowledgement. The stillness hadn't left him. If anything, he seemed wound even tighter, so tense that the merest pressure might shatter him into brittle fragments. "Understandable. If you—"

She stuck up a finger, begging him to let her finish. "Hold on. I'm not making sense yet."

His sigh rattled through his nose. "No, Michi. I get it—"

"Stop it," she said, not sharply, not with ire, but with tender, nervous entreaty. She wasn't Hiei barking one of his biting commands. She just required a moment to get everything out in the open—to make him see that this wasn't rejection, but an appeal for him to give her time.

And a request for a hand to clutch as she plunged.

"It's like I'm starting over, not at ground zero exactly, but not much farther up either. I'm back on the third floor, still stuck at the botanical gardens, while you're on the twentieth, where we were before the holidays. I need to get to a place where when I see you, the name that comes to mind isn't Shuichi." She smiled, best she could. "I don't think that's so far off, but it's not here quite yet." Then, because it seemed nearly as important as all the rest, she added, "At the same time, I'm trying to work out who _I_ am, where I fit amongst the three worlds, what the heck I'm doing with my life. Again, I don't have the details ironed out just yet, but I'm close."

Bit by bit, the rigid set of his shoulders unwound. His gaze softened, a kaleidoscope of blues and purples scattering across his threads. "I see." Beneath the table, his foot found hers. This time, she didn't pull away. "In that case, while I can't necessarily aide you in the latter quest, I'm happy to assist with the former. Let's get you to that place, shall we?"

Picking up her chopsticks, she ducked her head to hide the breadth of her smile. "Let's."

"How about we start with the aforementioned whining?"

She laughed. "I hope your ears—in all their varieties—are ready."

* * *

They hung in their booth for nearly an hour, talking as they had not in months—as they maybe never had. For the most part, Kurama listened. Without judgment. Without scrutiny. In turn, she spilled all the stress of the last weeks in a muddle of words and jumbled thoughts.

At some point, Kurama ordered another hot sake, and when their waitress returned with it, he put in an order for mochi. Then, as soon as Michi finished the last bite, he requested daifuku. The rice cakes came out shortly, and Michi couldn't resist the sweet red bean paste hidden within, but even as she scarfed down yet more dessert, she didn't miss the tact in Kurama's continued orders. He was giving her time, letting her vent until she ran out of words.

And vent she did.

Her worries were far ranging. They started with her college classes and the major for which she possessed no true passion. Rewarding herself for each confession with a fresh bite of dessert, she admitted how every psychology and anatomy and physiology course she'd ever taken had been meant to find the cure to her territory, as absurd as that was. None of them interested her, not truly, and as with so much else in her life, she couldn't confess as much to her parents or Runa and the girls. Doing so would open her up too many questions she didn't dare answer.

That topic of course fed into her fears about the girls themselves. About how Michi was losing them. About how they'd noticed her disappearance over the last two weeks. About Runa's concerns regarding 'Shuichi.' About how keeping straight the lies she'd spun regarding him was enough to give her a migraine rivaling anything her territory could conjure up.

It was only as their waitress brought over the check that Kurama turned the topic of conversation back toward himself. Though Michi tried to contribute to the bill, he waved her off, handing his credit card off to their server before saying, "I have some experience in all of this, if you're open to hearing it."

Not quite believing him, she popped the last trace of daifuku past her lips. "You have a bunch of girls getting too close to your secrets?"

He chuckled lowly, sending a shiver down her spine. "No. That was you for a time, but you've puzzled out nearly all my riddles now. I'd like to dispel the rest."

"Now?"

"If you have the time. My apartment is only a few blocks from here. The conversations—and demonstrations—I'd like to have are perhaps better held in private."

Though she couldn't begin to fathom the meaning of 'demonstrations', she couldn't begrudge him the desire for seclusion. After all, more than once in the last hour she'd had to cut herself off as their waitress approached with one of his orders or while another patron passed on the way to the washroom. In his apartment, privacy wouldn't be hard to find. Yusuke would still be off at Genkai's, delivering Nishi to the shrine, and Kuwabara had gone with Yana on a collection that took them at least four hours out of the city. He wouldn't be back in Mushiyori for ages yet.

After a beat, she shrugged, straining to hide signs of how her veins sparked with nervous thrill. "I can't say I had anything else planned for the night."

Smiling faintly, he slid from the booth. "Perfect. Pardon me a moment. Back in two."

As he made for the bathrooms in the back of the restaurant, Michi fished her phone from the folds of her discarded jacket. She'd made a decision today—a choice to take the leap, repercussions be damned—and delivering on that promise started small.

It began with her phone—and a number that at last deserved a name.

* * *

AN: More Kurama and Michi next chapter. In fact, another entire chapter dedicated just to them.

An important thing to note (and something that I hope came across in this chapter): I think there's this wildly unhealthy trope in modern society that it's somehow romantic for a man to chase after a woman whose broken up with him until she changes her mind, to hound her and 'charm her' and pester her with grand gestures that are supposed to make her love him again. I don't intend for Kurama to do that. If he actually cares about Michi, if he actually respects her, then he has to respect her _choice_ _s,_ too. Even if those choices were to involve not reconciling with him and returning to any kind of romantic entanglement. That doesn't mean he'll be able to simply cut off his own feelings at the drop of a hat, but it does mean that he knows he'll have to keep them to himself if she were not to choose him.

Make sense?

The other big bit of news: I've been updating this fic every Saturday since the beginning of June (holy smokes, that's a long time), but the time I'm going to be able to devote to BBL is decreasing a bit over the next month or two. I need to do some pretty hefty, intensive revisions on a novel of mine so my agent can shop it to publishers, and that's going to need to be my first priority.

To that end, **I'll be posting Ch. 27 as usual next Saturday, but after that, BBL will drop to an every-other-Saturday schedule** until I'm done with my revisions and able to get back to my normal drafting groove. Sorry, friends! But seriously, don't fret, neither me nor this fic are going anywhere. You will be getting an ending, and you will be getting it in a timely fashion. I promise.

With that all said, endless, endless thanks to everyone who chimed in after last chapter. I got through about the half the review responses I intended to send out, and I'll be getting to the rest very, very shortly. In the meantime, a big shout out here to: knightsqueen05, ahyeon, WistfulSin, xanaldy, Laina Inverse, MissIdeophobia, LadyEllesmere, seleane gray, ookawa, UzumakiRaven, Gwen Flaming Katana, Shell1331, roseeyes, and Guest!


	27. Ever Green

"I didn't realize," Michi said as they reached the stoop of Kurama's apartment building and he guided her up the steps, "that no one in your human life knows what you are."

He hadn't waited for privacy to start filling her in on why he related to her current struggles with Runa, Nanako, and Yurie. The moment they'd left the sushi restaurant, he'd begun, pitching his voice to a low, thrumming murmur, walking so close at her side that their arms brushed near constantly.

The narrative he'd spun had surprised her. It started with his childhood and the unbelievable story of growing up in an adolescent's body, still his demon self and yet also this new, strange boy, and then he wove a tale of a mother so doting and loving and kind that the plan he'd harbored from the moment his soul melded with that of Shuichi Minamino began to evaporate under the strength of her devotion. It was an upbringing as foreign to the one he'd had in Demon World as he could've fathomed possible—and it changed him.

It made him who he was now.

The rest of his story would come later, he promised. Provided she wanted to hear it—which, at this point, it seemed pointless to deny she did. Whenever that time came, he'd bridge the gap of time separating the day he realized he couldn't leave the life he'd stumbled upon in Human World and the place he found himself in now. During that in-between, he'd fallen in with Hiei, then with Yusuke and Kuwabara, and his life had taken a new course, yet again.

But that wasn't his focus tonight, and as he slotted his key into the lock of his building's outer door, he paused to glance over his shoulder at her, his smile soft and mournful—not a frown somehow, and yet hauntingly sad all the same. "If you discover the words to tell a woman her son isn't remotely what she believes him to be, please share them with me because I've spent years trying to work out how it could be done, and I regret to admit that I don't believe it can."

The broken acceptance in his tone, coupled with the regret strung in strands of cherry blossom pink through his Loom, had her reached for his empty hand. He accepted, allowing her fingers to slide through his, and then, their hands conjoined, they crossed the threshold into the lobby.

Inside, his building was nicer than she'd expected—far finer than her own. The carpeting was freshly vacuumed, the walls coated in inviting beige, the lighting warm and welcoming. The rent to stay in a place like this seemed impossibly out of reach for a trio of boys in their early twenties. But then, Kurama, Yusuke, and Kuwabara weren't any mere trio of boys, were they?

As Kurama hit the call button for the elevator, she rocked onto her heels. "I owe you an apology."

His thumb swept across her knuckles. "What for?"

"For insinuating that your identity was an open secret kept only from me."

The elevator doors pinged open, and they stepped inside. Within, it was all paneled mahogany wood and sleek steel. Goodness, her place looked so shabby compared to this.

"I can hardly fault you for drawing that conclusion." Kurama pressed the button for the third floor, then glanced down at their entwined hands, his thumb repeating its pass over the grooves and valleys of her joints. "As far as you could tell, all my friends are involved in this world. Both my roommates. Hiei. Our old allies who were invited to Genkai's. It's a rather vast network."

"Doesn't mean I should've assumed."

"Assumptions are human nature."

Two floors up, the elevator slowed and emptied into the hall, and as they went, Michi shot Kurama a probing look, trying to work out if he'd meant anything with his use of 'human.' Was he implying demons to somehow be different? To think in a manner dissimilar to humans? Were they less fallible to faulty leaps of judgment—

His threads flashed with a stroke of amused cobalt. "Just a saying, Michi. Don't overanalyze it."

She blushed. "How'd you know what I was thinking?"

"You have a look that overtakes you any time an otherworldly topic is brought up or an inhuman skill exhibited. Not in regard to the halfway house or its transplants, but whenever those instances pertain to myself or Yusuke or the others. Like you're trying to work out if whatever new piece of the three worlds has been revealed is actually possible."

As they reached a door at the end of the hall, he unlaced their fingers so he could pull forth another key. Swiftly, he unlocked first the regular tumbler, then the deadbolt, and the door swung inward on silent hinges

Leading her into the darkened entryway, he added, "It's surprisingly endearing, for lack of a better word, that you possess a territory which taps into the very—literal—fabric of existence, and yet you're startled that we can run faster than your everyday human." He flicked a switch, and golden light illuminated his features, revealing the upward tilt of his lips. "In any event, demons are as prone to assumptions as humans. Perhaps a better statement would've been 'living nature,' though that idiom might prove equally flawed in light of the likes of Botan."

Michi ducked her head, bending down to unzip her boots, but she could tell from Kurama's humming, barely contained chuckle that whatever look he'd been referencing had resurfaced. Truly, though, could he blame her?

What in all three worlds could it mean that Botan invalidated his phrasing?

But further thought on Botan's status among the living evaporated as she trailed Kurama out of the apartment's cozy entry and into the living room, its contents leaving her awestruck.

Wood floors. Broad windows. High ceilings. A leather couch set before a sprawling television. Off to the right, the hall led into a barely visible kitchen, but from what little she glimpsed, she spotted granite countertops and high-end appliances.

Outside on the sidewalk, Kurama's building had put hers to shame. In the lobby downstairs, it had surprised her with its discreet finery. But here? Within his actual apartment? Here, she was nothing short of flummoxed.

She'd like to believe it was the sheer shock that allowed her tongue its next question—certainly it wasn't her manners. "How in the world do you afford this place?"

Padding on silent feet, Kurama made for the half-concealed kitchen. Michi trailed in his wake, entirely too conscious of how wrong she'd been about why he'd never brought her here. She'd assumed he lived in a stereotypical pigsty, surrounded by the junk a bunch of young guys were often all too happy to let accumulate, and sure, there were signs this place was lived in—a green jacket tossed over an armchair, an unfolded blanket heaped on the couch, a console whose blinking light revealed someone had been too lazy to switch it off—but this was no gross mire of impropriety.

This was a gosh darn palace hidden in plain sight.

She scrabbled to elaborate. "I mean, Yusuke owns a ramen stand, you work for you step-father, and Kuwabara is what? A student still? I don't understand."

Kurama stopped at the fridge, his Loom a weave of muted blues. "It's surprisingly easy to forget how few details of our lives you actually know." The lopsided twist of his lips he cast her way set off fireworks between her ribs. "Mundane though our lives here in Human World appear, neither Yusuke nor—to a lesser extent—myself are so inconsequential in Demon World. To make a long story very short, Yusuke discovered a rather hefty inheritance awaiting him after his ancestral, demon father died. Combining his birthright with the funds I earned after a brief military service in Demon World, buying this apartment proved… trivial."

They'd _bought_ this place?

Actually, never mind that—because what in all that was holy did 'ancestral father' mean?

Leaning into the counter for stability, its cold, granite kiss against her back granting her clarity, she said dryly, "You know, for someone trying to make their strangeness less strange, your explanations are shockingly bizarre."

Kurama withdrew a pair of sodass from the fridge and offered her one with a raised brow. "Should I return to evasion?"

Rolling her eyes, she grabbed the can, popped its tab, and gulped down a bracing sip. "Not my point."

"Then what is?"

She hesitated. How to put her finger on it, on the odd, easy way with which he made the impossible sound so utterly mundane? But then, perhaps that was it exactly. For him, all this _was_ mundane.

Ancestral fathers. Girls who weren't living. Friends who would die for each other, as Kuwabara had said the day she'd taught them about the Ties That Bind. Friends who died and yet weren't dead, like Yusuke. Friends who killed those who trusted them, those they cared for, because the deceased's fragile souls were already long gone.

She sagged against the counter, then rubbed a thumb across her tired eyes. "It's not actually strange for you, is it? These things you're saying… I'm sure you appreciate how bizarre it all sounds, but you don't find it odd. Not in any real sense."

"No," he agreed. "I don't."

"Doesn't that drive you insane? How do you juggle existing in this world—" she spread her hands, encompassing his apartment with a sweep of her soda can "—and working a human job and visiting your mother and all of that without feeling like you're being torn in two?"

The steady humor that had stayed with most of the evening at last faded into the ether, the muted cobalt in his threads giving way before more serious navy. "Come on," he said, stepping away from the fridge and gesturing her to follow him into the living room. "Let's get comfortable."

Michi almost laughed at the absurdity of it all, but the sudden tightness in her chest silenced her, and she shadowed him to the couch without so much as a sigh escaping her lips. They arranged themselves on the cushions, close but not touching—near and yet far too distant all at once.

"Is that how you feel?" he asked. "Like the secrets created by your territory are tearing you apart?"

Desperate to quell the roiling anxiety in her gut, she set her soda on a coaster atop the coffee table, then reached for the jumbled blanket pooled upon the back of the couch and hauled it into her lap. Over and over, she smoothed her fingers across its velveteen surface, and with each pass, her heartbeat slowed, her nerves quieting.

"It's not my territory necessarily," she said after a beat. "It's trying to keep everything in perspective. Normal life feels so skewed and inconsequential and… _small_. It's hard to focus on turning in essays or passing tests when I know a demon transplant lives ten blocks off campus and might become a bloodthirsty, destructive monster at any moment."

Plus, there was the piece she left unsaid—the one that would hurt him too much for her to ever say it aloud, the one that made it near impossible to go out for milkshakes with her friends and cry about the guy who broke her heart because the reason he'd broken it was beyond the pall of their comprehension.

How could he stomach it? How could he balance the boring simplicity of working for his step-father's company by day and hunting down rogue demons at night? How could—

"Honestly?" he said. "It tears me apart, too."

Oh.

 _That_ she had not expected.

"Really?"

He nodded, eyes unreadable as he leaned forward and claimed another coaster with his soda. "There's a final piece of our dynamic I've yet to explain to you, a reason for why I didn't reveal my true nature."

Judging from his tenuous delivery, she suspected he thought this would come as a surprise to her or perhaps that it would make her angry, but—whether he'd meant to or not—Yusuke had prepared her for this reveal. More than that, he'd given her strict instructions on how to behave.

Might as well attempt to abide by them.

"Yusuke suggested as much," she said, and when Kurama's brows climbed to his hairline, she added, "He also advised that I refrain from being a naggy bitch while you explain. And on that note, has anyone ever told him how thoroughly he appears to have been raised by ogres?"

A flicker of halting cobalt half-unfurled in Kurama's threads, quickly accompanied by a faint current of affection. Overall, though, his Loom remained a darker blue, his approximation of resolve joined by a smattering of mustard anxiety. He sat with a sort of rigid defensiveness, shoulders firmly pressed back into the leather couch, one leg crossed atop the other, like he wasn't positive he wanted to admit whatever he was about to and yet had already determined that he must.

But instead of rolling into whatever confession boiled on his tongue, he said instead, "I don't recall hearing you say bitch before."

Her nose crinkled. "I was quoting him."

"That does sound like Yusuke."

Kurama's nervousness reawakened the jitters she'd managed to still, and she fidgeted. This wasn't like him. Uncertainty. Apprehension. Sometimes he played these recursive games, avoiding the topic at hand while he framed the situation with his own constructs, but this wasn't that—and it baffled her.

What could have him so unsettled? After his vulnerable honesty at dinner, why was whatever confession he was prepping now somehow harder to admit to?

Moving gingerly, half-convinced he'd jump out reach, she shifted, drawing her knees up and then angling them sideways, toward Kurama, her feet scooting beneath her butt. When she stilled, her kneecaps lay pressed against his thigh, and seemingly without thinking, he slid his right hand over the slope of her leg, fingers curving gently, finding the crease of her knee. It was closer than they'd been in weeks, a degree of casual touch that, though thoroughly innocuous, still blurred the lines of mere friendship into nothing more than smears.

That he hadn't moved away gave her the courage to press further, and as far as she could manage it, being truthful—and exposed, in turn—seemed the best route forward. If she wanted him to bare his uncertainties, the least she could do was return the favor.

To that end, she whispered, "Your threads are confusing me."

She'd drawn so near to him that the ghost of his laugh stirred strands of her hair, and she reached up to tuck them away as he said, "A few years ago, I made the choice to remain in Human World permanently, to live as Shuichi Minamino until, at the very earliest, the time of my mother's eventual passing. In the moment, the decision seemed quite clear to me. I love my mother dearly, and I've already experienced firsthand how the years I will share with her could, at any time, become preciously few. Ostensibly, then, it wasn't difficult to put aside any futures offered to me in Demon World. They could wait—and so, I envisioned, could I."

He paused a moment, then shook his head at some unspoken thought before carrying on. "What I did not account for was the simplicity of life as a human. I'm used to a certain degree of challenge. Years ago, as Yoko, I constantly sought ever more valuable treasures, seeking to test myself against the greatest safeguards and fortifications known to demonkind. Later, as a human teen, I found the rigors of high school surprisingly captivating. It was a different sort of challenge—certainly; my life was not at stake—but learning the history and culture of an entirely new people provided some modicum of variability to my days. Falling in with Yusuke's work as Spirit Detective only served to increase that unpredictability." Glancing sidelong at her, he offered the barest trace of a forlorn smile. "But once I closed the door on Demon World at the end of Yusuke's service as Detective, I found—to be quite frank—that I grew bored. Almost immediately."

"And you were bored when I met you."

His tongue darted out to wet his lips. "I was."

Cautiously, she wrapped her fingers around his wrist, stroking her thumb across its underside. "But you're not anymore."

"No," he agreed, "I'm not."

"Why?"

"Twofold reasons, I'd say. The first is obvious enough. Genkai enlisting the old team to track down the rogue psychics reinvigorated my previously dull days. As has my continued involvement since then."

She swallowed roughly. "And the other?"

"You."

He said it simply. Not like some grand confession, though the stain of mustard in his threads revealed that it was no easy admission. Yet despite that unease, he stated it like mere truth. A fact. Plain. Guileless. Utterly incontrovertible.

She understood why. She'd been a conundrum to unravel, a secret to dig to the bottom of. She said as much, refusing to let her voice rise in question: "Because my ties to Demon World presented a mystery." Better to unearth the rest of this revelation on her own terms than let him—

"No, Michi."

The rush of purple in his Loom struck her mind clear of thoughts.

"Your effect on me had nothing to do with your territory." The hand curled over her leg squeezed once, muscles flexing beneath the press of her fingers against his wrist. "Michi, I didn't tell you what I was because our relationship was too dear to me. It was the first time in all my years as a human that I wanted to remain in this world for a reason other than my mother."

"Kurama, I—"

Another flex of his fingers quieted her. "Since the day my demon soul entered this body, I've struggled to connect with humans, to this world in general. Beyond my mother, my ties were preciously few and excessively tenuous. But with you…" He cut himself off, but what he did not say remained spoken just as loudly as what he had.

Quiet enveloped them, and she made no effort to break it, recognizing the comfort he drew from the stillness. If he needed a moment to gather himself, she could grant him that.

In the meantime, hoping he wouldn't startle, she slid more deeply into the couch cushions, twisting her torso to align with her knees and leaning forward, resting her temple against his shoulder. For a breath, he stiffened at the contact, but then he relaxed beneath her, his grip on her leg tightening as he drew her more solidly against him.

"I kept the truth from you because I was selfish," he said at last. "I feared that enlightening you would push you away or that, even if it didn't, knowing the truth would alter what was between us."

He'd been right to worry. Uncovering the truth had driven them apart. And for all her angry accusations about his secret keeping, she knew better than to think she'd have reacted any better had he been honest at some prior date. It didn't make his choices right, but she understood them. She _got_ it.

"Maybe," she all but whispered, "we aren't so different then." Her lips brushed across the fabric of his sweater with every word, and he shuddered, breath ragged in the near silence.

How long they sat there, her forehead pressed against his arm, his hand snagged around her thigh, she couldn't begin to say, but eventually, his hold on her loosened. "If you'll remember, I promised you not just an explanation, but a demonstration as well."

She sat up, eyeing him warily. "Right. I still have no idea what that's supposed to mean."

"Haven't you wondered what my demon energy is capable of?"

Yes.

And no.

Mostly no.

Her knowledge of the powers granted by spirit and demon energy was sketchy as best. There were psychics like her, who possessed manifested territories—Asato's talent with shadows, Kaito's ability to craft rules within a dimension under his domain, Yana's skill of copy. Those were easy enough to understand, and for the most part, they were small scale gifts, their area of effect immediate and limited.

But beyond territories lay a realm of skillsets she'd spent years ignorant of. Even once she'd begun placing transplants, she'd skimmed—or completely ignored—Hiei's breakdowns of her charges' talents. It was only in the last weeks that she'd truly started paying attention. Now her catalogue expanded almost daily, logging away Hiei's fire and Yusuke's glowing fist, Kuwabara's energy sword and Taki's stoneskin, Junko's manipulation of time and Matsu's terrifying tattoos. She'd even gone back and studied those they'd lost already, like Dai and his ability to summon percussive blasts or Ryota and his control over shadows.

Where Kurama lay along that spectrum of destruction, she hadn't dared to imagine. What might he be capable of? What hid beneath his skin? Would she be able to sit with him like this, comfortable and unafraid, once she knew what horrors his scarred hands could perpetuate?

"I've tried not to think about it."

"Why not?"

She shrugged, fingers knotting in the blanket still pooled in her lap. "Because I don't know which is worse—what my imagination might conjure up or what the reality might be."

At that, he laughed, the smooth tenor of his chuckle pealing through the room. "Fair enough, though I'd like to believe the former will prove the bigger foe." Releasing her leg entirely, he stood and strode for the window. The sloping cut of his shoulders blocked her view of whatever he fetched from the sill, but when he turned, she discovered he cradled not some weapon of terrible intent, but a simple potted plant—the same one she'd first seen in his room at Genkai's and then that he'd later carried through the snow to the train station.

She drew her legs more fully beneath herself, folding them into a pretzel as he returned to the couch and set the plant down between their soda cans. "I can't believe this actually survived the cold for so long."

Truthfully, it seemed to have done more than survive. Its long stalk was thriving, a bright, vivid green frond stretching toward the ceiling. As it had two weeks prior, the stem gave rise to a series of tiny, unbloomed buds, their petals closed tight.

"I told you I had means of keeping it alive, didn't I?"

She reached for her soda, lifting the can to her lips and trying to conceal the eager anticipation itching beneath her skin. A glimmer of nerves set her heart pattering against her breastbone, but despite all the weeks she'd spent stubbornly refusing to consider what powers Kurama might possess, she could no longer contain her curiosity.

Yet even still, as he stretched a lithe finger out and traced its pad alone the curve of the plant's stem, she wasn't ready for the way the flower answered.

As soon as his fingertip kissed the first bud, the plant blossomed. The blooms unfurled, tiny leaves spreading around their bases as white petals spread wide, opening into delicate, fragile bells that dangled from the stalk on minuscule stems.

She recognized it immediately—this simple, unarresting flower.

A lily of the valley.

The blossom she'd named her favorite all those months ago when he'd taken her to the botanical gardens.

"Michi?"

She startled, pulling free of the revere she'd fallen into, gaze lurching up to find his. "Wow. I… was not expecting that."

He chuckled softly. Then his fingers delved into his hair, just as she'd seen them do twice before, and when they returned, his pointer and thumb were pressed together, concealing something. Only this time, unlike those prior incidents, she had a guess what hid between his fingertips.

"My gift lies in the growth of plants," he said, and the seed clutched in his grip morphed into a rose, appearing as if from nothing. "I assure you, it's no less deadly a skill than any other you've seen, but it does lend itself to beauty in a way others might not."

Darting a quick glance at the elegant lily of the valley, she said, "Yes, I'd say it does."

Had he really made note of which flower she'd liked most at the gardens and remembered it all this time? Had he already cared that much—

Oh.

 _Oh._

"The botanical gardens had yet another layer of test to them, didn't they?" she asked, the question more rhetorical than anything. After all, she already knew the answer. "You were trying to judge if I knew you could do this." She waved a hand, its sweep encompassing both the lily and rose.

"It was a consideration, I won't deny that." His right shoulder rolled upward the barest inch in a not-so-sheepish shrug. "But mostly, I just love those gardens, and I wanted to share them with you."

"Sure, you did."

He chuckled. Eyes dancing with mirth, he set the rose aside and faced her more directly. Emerald curiosity flitted through his Loom in pale flickers. "I do have to ask: what did you imagine my powers might be?"

She blushed and dropped her gaze from his. "I don't know. That you turn into some kind of massive, monstrous werefox on the full moon or something equally inane."

The smirk that split across his features squashed the embarrassment warming her cheeks, as did the bursts of cobalt amusement and lime surprise that dyed his Loom in bright, clear swathes.

"No," she whispered.

He said nothing.

"No," she repeated.

This time he laughed, his head falling back against the couch's backrest as he attempted to smother his mirth against his knuckles. His Loom danced in a constellation of blues, amethyst affection flickering beneath. "Well, your details aren't quite right, but I do possess another form. Two, actually."

"Ones in which you're a fox."

"More or less."

She stared at him, gawking, then groped for her soda and chugged down a series of fizzing gulps. It was something to do with her hands, something to do with her mouth other than gape in shocked disbelief.

Shoulders still shaking with contained humor, he said, "I'm surprised this is so startling to you."

"Are you kidding?" She propped her elbows on her crisscrossed knees, her hair tumbling over her shoulder in a riotous wave. "In what world do people turn into foxes— Scratch that. Stupid question. In Demon World, obviously."

He snorted. Mild-mannered, absurdly polite, ever composed Kurama actually snorted. "It'll be a shame when I run out of secrets to show you." He reached out, two slender fingers gliding through her hair and guiding the locks behind her ears. "Your disbelief is refreshing."

She barely heard him.

The fingers that had tamed her bangs hadn't retreated right way. Instead, he trailed their backs down her cheek and along the line of her jaw, his touch so fleeting she half-thought it imagined. But she could see his arm, could feel the barest kiss of his calloused fingertips. This moment was real. She was sitting here with him, in his living room, right beside the lily of the valley he'd bloomed with the same fingers that now caressed her face.

And somehow, despite everything that had transpired between them, despite everything that he was, this moment felt comfortable. Being with him felt easy. It felt _right_.

"Kurama," she whispered.

The amusement faded from his threads, replaced with endless swathes of palest amethyst. That precise shade of purple was becoming so familiar to her that she almost forgot typical affection was lavender, not the faded jewel tone of Kurama's peculiar Loom. "Yes?"

But now that she had his unwavering focus, she didn't know what to say. Maybe she should thank him—for remembering the lilies of the valley, for not rushing her, for accepting that she might not choose him. Or maybe she should try to explain how beautiful his threads were, how much they made her heart ache in her chest, how much being enveloped in them felt like coming home.

Or maybe she should kiss him.

Because, oh, how she wanted to kiss him.

When words failed to manifest, she shook her head in defeat, her cheek turning into his open hand. She settled for pressing a kiss to the heel of his palm, and though she'd lost sight of him through the curtain of her hair, she heard his gentle intake of breath.

"A final confession," he said almost raggedly, as if he'd just run some great distance.

"Another?"

"This is the last, at least for now."

Nodding, she pulled back, leaning into the couch, letting its leather envelop her and hugging the blanket up to her chest. Reluctantly, Kurama returned his hand to his lap, lacing it together with the other, and she watched a swirl of new colors seep across his Loom. To her surprise, silvery embarrassment shone chief among them.

He cleared his throat, eyes closing as he drew in one long, stabilizing breath. "You're not the only one with a means of perceiving emotion."

Her brows shot toward her hairline. "Excuse me?"

"My ability isn't nearly so finely tuned as your own, though I do have a far vaster lifetime of experience at honing my perception, so it's effective enough."

Meaning what, exactly? She shot him with a stern frown. "Stop being mysterious."

Lips caught somewhere between a wry smile and an uneasy twist, he tapped his nose. "My sense of smell is far more articulate than a human's. With it, there's a rather wide range of emotions I'm able to distinguish."

She blinked at him. Once. Twice. Then, haltingly, she stammered, "Let me get this straight. Not only can you turn into fox, but you can smell like one?"

He raised his palms, waffling them back and forth like a shifting scale. "Better than, technically. Human World foxes are an unimpressive take on their Demon World counterparts. Again, it's nothing like your territory's breadth of detail—"

"Wait." She jabbed a finger at him, disregarding his waffling about the Loom of Life as compared to his olfactory skills—because, really, did the specifics even matter? He could _smell_ her emotions. That was… Well, if nothing else, it leveled the playing field, and that she didn't mind so much. Besides, she'd pieced together another of his riddles now, and it felt pivotal that he knew she'd worked it out. "Your supposed 'variety' of ears—that's because you have a fox set, isn't it?"

The most startlingly adorable crease formed between his brows. "That's what you've taken away from this?"

"Um, yes. You've sort of tapped out my well of surprise. Sorry to disappoint." She scooted her knee sideways, bumping it into his thigh, and as his gaze darted downward, she added, "Honestly, I'm almost relieved to learn about this superior nose of yours. If nothing else, it means I'm not being quite so rude looking at your threads. As long as you're smelling my emotions, it's not so horrible that I see yours."

His threads danced with befuddled lime and vague mint suspicion. "It doesn't bother you?"

"Would be a bit hypocritical if it did, wouldn't it?"

"I suppose." He rubbed his chin, attention drifting across the room, gaze settling on the light still blinking on the gaming console beside the television. "Though, I feel I should stress, the particulars of emotion are far less distinct viewed my way as compared to yours. Without body language and context, I can't, for instance, easily differentiate between fear and surprise and anger. They're all the same brunt of adrenaline fueled hormones."

Michi tilted her head into the cushions. "So what can you distinguish?"

"More baseline emotions. Fight or flight. Contentment." He paused, wetting his lips, his eyes returning from their jaunt across the room and sweeping over her lazily. "Desire."

A blush scorched into her cheeks.

Now she understood what had brought about this final confession.

She'd been fantasizing about kissing him—and not chastely on his palm—and while the specifics of those thoughts might not have been apparent, he hadn't missed their occurrence.

"Well, touché," she said after a rough swallow. "Desire is indigo in a Loom—even for you."

For perhaps the first time in all the months she'd known him, his cheeks flushed, and he looked away again, though he made no move to break the contact between their legs. "Turnabout is fair play, and all relevant sayings therein," he murmured with a husky laugh. "In any event, that's all my cards on the table. Do with them what you may."

She started to muster a witty reply, but a yawn overtook her as it formed, and instantly, Kurama straightened, readying to stand. Quickly, she grabbed his wrist and whispered, "I don't want to go yet."

His answer formed slowly as approximations of aquamarine contentment and teal happiness swept through his threads like an incoming tide. The burgeoning warmth in his eyes lit coals in her belly.

"Then don't."

So she didn't.

* * *

AN: As promised, an entire chapter of Michi and Kurama content. I'm not sure I love the very beginning (with the summarizing of Kurama's backstory) because it feels rather clunky, but I didn't want to waste time on the part we all know already; I'd rather focus on the bits that I'm putting a spin on or that are directly relevant to Michi. And I do really love the rest of this chapter. I hope you all did, too!

Time for another round of musical inspiration (possibly the last of the fic? Not because the story is almost over, but just because this is the last song that composed my primary inspiration): In this case, the song is 'Good For You' by Darlingside. I've mentioned how much I love this song (and how much I think it fits Kurama's feelings for Michi) before on my Tumblr, but I think this chapter is the first time the feel of this song really manifests.

The relevant lyrics in particular are: "Oh, I was happiness and I was sorrow / Down on that old South Boundary line / And what will I become tomorrow? / Maybe everything will be alright / I don't want to keep you up all night / _I want to be good for you."_

(Another relevant song, thought entirely instrumental, is 'Elevation' by Really Slow Motion, which has basically defined the emotional dynamic of Michi and Kurama in my mind since the moment I first conceived of this fic.)

You guys absolutely blew up my inbox this week. Holy smokes! And we blasted right past 300 reviews in the process. Endless thanks to every last one of you: knightsqueen05, LadyEllesmere, Laina Inverse, WistfulSin, MissIdeophobia, xanaldy, UzumakiRaven, ookawa, roseeyes, o-dragon, elusiverecluse, ahyeon, Shell1331, Star Charter, and Guest.

Also, a reminder that this story is moving to an every-other-week update schedule for a bit while I get revisions done for a novel of mine. So I'll see you all in two weeks!


	28. Muddled Mulberry

Michi stayed with Kurama for hours, curled up on his couch, snuggled in a blanket, laughing and talking and—most importantly—gaming.

As it turned out, the console had been left on not by Yusuke as Michi had first assumed, but by Kurama, and it wasn't long before its blinking eye had drawn both their attention. One red, elegantly quirked eyebrow later, Kurama had been on his feet, fetching controllers for both of them.

The game he'd abandoned on pause proved to a puzzle-based platformer, and though he'd been partway through a solo campaign, he happily revealed the built-in co-op option, and ten minutes later, they were deeply immersed, working in tandem to claw their way through brainteaser after brainteaser. Kurama was _good_ —there was no denying that—but so was she, and together, they made a near perfect team. Rarely did a level manage to stump them both for any length of time, and by the time Kuwabara returned home around ten, they'd already progressed through a quarter of the co-op campaign.

After a moment's surprise at finding Michi nestled on the couch, Kuwabara grabbed a controller of his own and threw himself onto the couch's remaining cushion. His presence put their puzzle-solving on hold, but Kurama's new selection—a crossover fighting game full of beloved characters from other franchises—had Michi grinning.

Last time she'd played games in Kurama's presence, it had been at an arcade of Yusuke's choosing, on old streetfighter machines that she had almost no experience with. But this? As far as multiplayer options went, this was her element.

And she proved it.

She won far more often than she lost, dealing out the most kills in nearly every round. Soon, she had Kuwabara begging Kurama to team up with him. "Anything," he howled, "to stop this ass-kicking." And when Kurama refused to appease him, his response nothing but a wordless toss of his head as he concentrated on fending off Michi's newest volley of attacks, Kuwabara shifted his focus to her, pleading to at least knock off Kurama first, declaring in a woeful keen, "Favoritism isn't fair, Meech!"

She merely laughed and booted his character straight out of the battlefield.

At some point, Yusuke arrived, shucking his coat and bellowing about 'that bitch of a grandma,' but after one look at the screen, he seized a controller and hurled himself onto the floor, propping his back against the couch between Michi and Kuwabara's knees, ignoring the boys' leather recliner in favor of a front row seat. Around them, the Loom of Life glinted, the Ties That Bind stretching in a stunning latticework over the array of ex-Detectives, and for once, she didn't mind it so much.

With Yusuke amongst their number, they again switched game modes, now fighting in duos—and though Kurama made a good partner, Yusuke was better. Even with Michi's best efforts, she and Kurama could only pull out a win against Yusuke and Kuwabara's teamwork every one-in-two games.

Eventually, as the clock ticked toward midnight, her gameplay grew sloppy, her fingers going numb after hours of button mashing and joystick toggling, and after they lost four matches in a row, Yusuke's fresh hands proving an insurmountable opponent, Kurama set aside his controller. "It's late, Michi. At this rate, you'll never get home."

Would that be such a bad thing?

Nevertheless, she unfolded her legs and rose creakily to her feet, easing around Yusuke as she did so. Her knees protested something fierce, stiff from hours bent up on themselves. "This isn't over," she said to Yusuke, wagging her controller in his direction.

He snatched it away, his threads gleaming with zinging teal. "Dang straight, Kuroki. I'm going to need a solo tournament to prove my dominance."

Shaking his head at their antics, Kurama stood and curled a lean hand around her elbow. Murmuring her goodbyes to the others, Michi let him guide her to the door. As they slipped into the entryway and she bent to pull on her shoes, he cleared his throat. "Promise me you'll cut back the number of nights you're spending on extractions. Let us handle some of them."

"Kurama—"

"Please," he added before she could speak.

"I wasn't going to argue."

A trace of stubborn navy darkened the edges of his Loom. "I find that hard to believe."

She laughed and straightened up. "Really, I mean it. You're right. I've been trying to balance too much. I'll ask Asato to cut my involvement back to five days a week. Just for the withdrawals themselves. I'll still help in other ways—ones that don't consume ten hours of the day." Wrapping a hand around the doorknob, she titled her head at him. "Satisfied?"

"I imagine it's the most you'll concede."

"What an accurate imagination you have."

That earned her another shake of his head and a rueful, bemused smile. "Then I'll take it." He paused, the gears behind his emerald eyes turning. She thought he might reach for her—might deliver that kiss she'd envisioned hours before—but then he dipped the polite sketch of a humorous bow and said simply, "Good night, Michi. Travel safe."

As she stepped into the hall, her veins buzzed as if flooded with champagne. "Night, Kurama."

* * *

Michi held true to her promise.

The next morning, as she walked to campus, she called Asato and requested that he shift the extraction schedule, omitting her on two trips during the weekdays. He complied without hesitation—even going so far as to say it was about time she realized she was stretching herself too thin. She got the distinct sense he knew the decision hadn't stemmed entirely from her, though whether he knew about Kurama's involvement thanks to his own intuition or the big mouths of Yusuke and Kuwabara, she couldn't be certain.

Either way, she found herself with two extra evenings, and she quickly filled them with nights spent with the girls. Dinners here and there weren't enough to abate the concern woven in strands of fibrous coral through Runa's Loom, but Nanako and Yurie ceased their endless barrage of texts checking in on her.

Moreover, with two afternoons added back to her schedule, it wasn't a challenge to catch back up—and even get ahead—on her assignments for university. After just two weeks, she'd read in advance for three classes and pre-written an essay not due for nearly a month in a fourth.

In a lot of ways, it felt _good_.

Yes, she wasn't helping as much with the halfway house as was absolutely possible, but Kurama was right. Striking a balance was key, and for the first time, she could actually see a means of making her lives in both worlds form some semblance of a cohesive whole. It wasn't prefect. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But it was a beginning, and all journeys started somewhere.

Nonetheless, she looked forward to the nights when she helped run transplant recalls. They gave her purpose. They made the bane of her territory seem a burden worth bearing, at least for now.

And she wouldn't deny it—they granted her moments with Kurama. Precious, fleeting instances in which she began to understand him, to recognize him for all that he was. Not just Shuichi. Not just a fragment of his larger whole. But Kurama. Multi-faceted and complete.

Truthfully, she liked the man she uncovered.

More than she dared to admit.

* * *

Late in the third week of extractions, as early-March loomed over Mushiyori, Michi walked off campus with Runa and discovered a familiar figure waiting at the crosswalk into Nako Square. A brown leather jacket. Red hair. Emerald eyes. A Loom washed out as if by moonlight.

He lifted a hand in greeting, lips quirking into a tranquil smile—one she categorized as Shuichi's easily enough. Around her, Kurama may have promised to be himself, but in front of Runa, it appeared he had other intentions.

At Michi's side, Runa whistled softly. She jostled an elbow into Michi's and hissed, "You know him?"

"Yeah."

But who was he to Runa? How was she meant to introduce him?

Sweat slicked her palms, and she hurriedly swiped them dry on the pleats of her skirt before leading Runa to him. "Hey," she said, asking with widened eyes what in the world he was doing here. "Runa, this is—"

"Kurama," he said, dipping a polite bow, creasing at the waist with fluid ease.

Runa's brows rose. Lime sparked in her threads. "Oh. I thought you might be someone else."

Meaning Shuichi. Michi knew that as surely as she'd ever known anything. Technically, Runa wasn't wrong—and yet, in all the ways that mattered, she couldn't be further from the truth.

Curiosity played across Kurama's Loom in his signature wash of green. "Sorry to disappoint."

Runa snorted. "Oh, no. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad you're not who I expected you to be." She cast Michi a pointed look. Then as the crossing light changed to a walk symbol, she hiked her bag up her shoulder and said, "I'm guessing you're hoping to walk Michi home or something of that nature, so I'll leave you to it. Text me, Meech."

"Will do."

In seconds, Runa disappeared into the flow of foot traffic, lost in the crowd of suited businessmen. Gone, just like that.

Biting at the inside of her cheek, Michi asked, "Why are you doing here? I thought we were meeting outside your apartment in two hours?"

Shuichi's smile still firmly in place, he gestured toward the crosswalk, and together, they traipsed for the far side of the street at a brisk trot, hurrying before the light changed. "You mentioned the subway being a torturous means of getting home, and that if you had any other means, you'd take that instead, right?"

She frowned at him as they boarded the escalator down into the subway tunnel. "Yeah. So?"

"And you said that my Loom—" he all but whispered the word, leaning close enough that his breath warmed the shell of her ear "—lessens the pain of your territory, correct?"

Her pulse jumped in her veins, and she prayed he couldn't smell the effect his proximity had on her heart, not to mention the rest of her. "Right again."

"Perhaps, then, a bit of company of your commutes wouldn't go amiss." The escalator deposited them on the subway's bustling platform, and his hand found the small of her back, grazing lightly, setting her entire spine aflame.

"But what about your job? Aren't you already missing so many hours working for the halfway house? I wouldn't want you to skip out on more—"

"Michi."

Instantly, she cut off her rambles.

"My step-father is a lax boss. Provided my work is done, he doesn't much care when it's accomplished."

The roar of an approaching train nearly drowned out the words he uttered next, but he bent nearer still, close enough that his chest pressed to her arm and she felt the thrum of his voice shiver beneath her skin. "I'd rather be here. Unless, of course, you don't want that."

Her answer to that went without saying.

* * *

From that afternoon on, Kurama became a regular presence during her commutes home. He and Runa rarely exchanged more than greetings as they handed off custody of Michi like some baton in a track race, but each day as Runa departed, the curiosity—and suspicion—in her Loom grew, blooming into ever-wider swathes of emerald and mint.

Yet despite those greens, Michi made no effort to explain Kurama's new regularity. She wasn't ready to share him yet—wasn't even sure how to do so if she'd wanted to.

Where her fibs about Shuichi met the reality of Kurama, she hadn't yet worked out. Could she simply pretend they were different men? Could she continue on as if Shuichi was truly gone from her life? Or did she owe Runa, Nanako, and Yurie the truth?

And, more importantly still, was it even worth worrying about when she wasn't yet sure what Kurama might become?

How did a fox fit into a human girl's life? Could one?

Or was that nothing but a fanciful dream, best meant for nights lying in her moonlit bedroom, hoping for a future that could never be?

* * *

The Wednesday of the fifth week of extractions brought together a team Michi hadn't worked with in months, not since their disastrous trip to visit Junko—the first of what had now amounted to nearly sixty transplant removals. Just like that trip months prior, Asato picked Michi up outside her apartment, though unlike last time, she piled into the backseat of his hatchback, diving into it before Yana could play his chivalrous game. Her theatrics earned her a sardonic smile from even Kaito, who bothered to look up from the transplant files he was reviewing just long enough to catch her eye. Moments later, they were on the road.

The transplants they were headed to pick up—Etsu and Saburo, Yana and Michi's placements respectively—had both answered the calls Asato had made to them weeks ago, but each had refused to extricate themselves from their lives. Neither posed any particular risk to the humans living around them, so when Genkai had summoned the Detectives out to the shrine on short notice, Asato had decided to shuffle their schedules around, electing to pick up two nonthreatening apparitions in one fell swoop while they lacked the muscle usually provided by the old Detective team. From Yokohama, the city where Etsu and Saburo had made their homes, Yana would take them on a train ride straight to Genkai's. Logistically, it wasn't as easy as one of the Detectives running the demons into the mountains, but it would suffice.

"Who are we getting first?" Michi asked as Asato pulled onto the highway.

"I was thinking Saburo?" Asato said, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. "Your evaluation said he can be stubborn, right? Probably makes sense to try our hand at convincing him first. If he digs his heels in and Etsu was around to see it, she might end up agreeing with him."

Yana reached up, grabbing the back of his headrest and stretching, his yawn audible even in the backseat. "Works for me. Etsu shouldn't put up too much of a fight. I'm pretty surprised she didn't head to Genkai's on her own, honestly. She's usual a stickler for rules."

"If her threads have been tampered with, she may not be making her own choices," Kaito said flatly. Ever the pragmatist, he was.

Pragmatic, but also right. These days, it seemed every transplant had traces of white in their Looms. Some were even worse than that, though none had come close to rivalling Taki or—gods forbid—Ryota yet. But Michi suspected more breakdowns weren't far off now. Too many transplants were unraveling. One was bound to snap soon.

She just hoped it wasn't one of the demons capable of a true rampage.

And even that seemed a hope made in vain.

* * *

Saburo's tenement building was tucked off a chaotic street in downtown Yokohama—so chaotic, in fact, that Asato couldn't find a parking spot, and eventually, he gave up, letting them all clamber out and then roving off in search of a lot or garage somewhere.

While he hunted, Michi led the way up to Saburo's apartment. By now, they'd all gotten adept at sneaking into buildings if transplants didn't prove cooperative, and as another resident departed Saburo's building, Yana snagged the door's handle and waved Kaito and Michi through.

Strictly speaking, they weren't supposed to run an extraction without all their team members present, but with Asato car-bound and a second withdrawal to run today, it seemed foolish to waste time waiting for Asato to find parking. Besides, Saburo's demonic skillset was powerful, but limited. He was all brute force. A bull in a man's body—or so Botan had said after glimpsing his headshot. Kaito's territory was constructed to neutralize threats like Saburo. His no violence rule rendered Saburo's strength moot, and from there, he should be easy enough to manage.

Provided his threads weren't out of control.

Saburo lived on the second floor, in a modest little studio. In a city like Yokohama, the halfway house's budget didn't allow for grand accommodations, not even with Spirit World funds providing subsidies, but given the choice, Saburo had wanted his home in a place that rivaled the liveliness of his native city in Demon World. He'd told her about it more than once, the grand capital of Gandara—whatever that meant—but she'd never much listened. Back then, she'd still stubbornly refused to learn anything more than she had to about Demon World's workings, and she'd retained just enough to convey his wishes to Genkai. From there, the psychic had found him this apartment.

The day Michi had brought him here, his Loom had lit with teal happiness so pure it brought tears pricking to her eyes.

That memory rose in her as Yana knocked roughly, and juxtaposed against the cruelty of forcibly removing Saburo from his home here, it evoked an entirely different brand of emotion. That couldn't be allowed to stop them, though, so she blinked back the worst of it and soldiered on. No matter how much Saburo hated it—and the raging black that swarmed across his threads when he opened his door declared that he most certainly _despised_ what their arrival meant—this was the right thing.

The thing that had to happen.

Eventually, he saw that. Just like all the others. Even if it did take so long that Asato managed to snag a parking spot and join them in Saburo's studio. In the end, Saburo got it.

And once he did, as the others had before him, he thanked her.

* * *

Against protocol or not, they chose to handle Etsu's extraction in the same manner they'd managed Saburo's, but this time, instead of puttering around in search of parking, Asato found a spot and unfurled his territory, readying to trap Saburo's shadow at a moment's notice. For now, the demon was cooperating, but who was to say if his benevolent mood would last. If it was bound to break, there was no better equipped guardian than Asato to keep Saburo in place.

The barest wrinkle of nerves set Michi's fingers twisting into knots within the pockets of her jacket as she climbed the steps to Etsu's flat in Yana's wake. Kaito brought up the rear, and each landfall of his shoes echoed off the stairwell's plaster walls, a staccato beat that thumped in time with her heart.

Kurama had devised their extraction rules for a reason, and though the logic in their choice to break those guidelines was sound, Michi couldn't help worrying they were pressing their luck. Saburo had been a known quantity for her, and his strengths were so perfectly offset by Kaito's that leaving Asato in the car hadn't seemed a true risk.

Now though?

Despite all Yana's claims about Etsu's calm, pacifist nature, Michi couldn't shake the sense that something was off. She felt it in the very air, a tightening, electric crackle of tension that had her clenching her jaw as Yana reached Etsu's door and drummed his knuckles against the wood.

As with Saburo, they'd snuck their way into the building, catching an outbound resident and slipping through before the door locked behind them—which meant Etsu had no reason to know they were coming. They'd given her no warning.

Maybe, then, it was innocuous that there were two Looms tucked beyond the door. Maybe, then, they'd simply arrived at a bad time, intruding while Etsu had a friend over to visit. Maybe.

But Michi doubted it.

Because the Loom… It was strange. Bizarre. Slippery and ephemeral, as if its threads had been doused in oil and now danced between Michi's fingers, impossible to get a hold off. It was nothing like Kurama's threads, muted and distant though they might be. This Loom was _here_ , viscerally so, a right hook straight to Michi's gut, and yet it was impossible to look at directly, like a spot on her vision, perceptible only at the edges of her sight.

"There's someone in there," she whispered. "Other than Etsu."

Yana's hand lurched to a halt. His head swung her way. "Like a human? Should we come back?"

"I don't think so."

In fact, she'd never been more sure of something in her life. Etsu couldn't be left in there. Not with that person. Not with that Loom.

Scrambling, she dug her phone from her purse and swiped into her messaging app. Two quick taps pulled open her conversation with Asato, but on second thought, she backed out and begin a new message, this time for two contacts. Asato, still. But Kurama, too.

Yana's knocking had stirred movement inside the flat, and Michi used the precious moments before Etsu's approaching Loom reached the door to key out a text. _–Something's wrong. Someone else is here. Loom is off. Unlike anything I've ever seen. It's—_ Then the door cracked, one liquid eye, black as ink, peering through the crevice, and Michi punched send regardless of her half-finished thought.

Mustard anxiety roiled in Yana's threads, tinged green by creeping tendrils of fear, but he forced a mega-watt smile and eased a foot into the door's gap. "Hey, Etsu."

"Why are you here."

It wasn't a proper question.

The demon's voice was too flat, too robbed of even the barest note of inflection. Her tone rendered the phrase a mere statement. An unflinching indictment of their presence.

Before it, Yana's fear spread wider. Forest green fissured through his yellow unease, a twisted approximation of sunlight dappling through leaves. A half-step back and to her right, Kaito tensed, and teeming moss apprehension swam in her peripheral vision.

But for all the boys' disquiet, Michi's own body remained strangely numb. The nerves that had previously set her fingers squirming in her pockets had fizzled away to nothing. In their place, she felt only a steady certainty that whoever waited beyond the flimsy fortification of Etsu's door held the answers they'd been searching for. This broken Loom and its oil-slicked threads were the keys to a lock she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

Which meant she had to get inside. She had to worm past Etsu's defenses and see the wearer of that Loom for herself.

And that left no room for fear.

As Yana fumbled for an answer to Etsu's emotionless greeting, Michi splayed a palm against the door and pushed. Not hard. Not forcefully. But confidently enough that Etsu couldn't miss her intent.

"Hi, Etsu," she said. The demon's hold on the door didn't give—if anything, the apparition only leaned against it harder—but Michi didn't grant any ground either. Inside her pocket, her phone buzzed with incoming texts. From Asato? From Kurama? She didn't check. Not now. Not with Etsu trying to gain ground in the battle for the door. "I don't believe we've met. I'm Michi Kuroki, another assistant for the halfway house. Like Yana."

The demon's nose scrunched beneath her liquid eyes. The fall of her hair half-obscured her face, a curtain of silky midnight, but the piercing intensity of her gaze didn't waver. "Leave."

Michi shook her head. "Sorry, can't do that. Not just yet."

The seething mass of Etsu's Loom was as black as her hair and eyes, but across that midnight expanse popped bursts of too bright color. Writhing crimson frustration. Stinging goldenrod discomfort. Prickling forest green fear. Peering at her Loom was like viewing the innards of a kaleidoscope, a black expanse dotted by senseless color.

It was a sight she'd become all too intimately familiar with in the months since she first visited Taki at Genkai's shrine. All those unconnected emotions fracturing across Looms. They weren't natural, weren't meant to arise that way. It was rage for the sake of rage, grief for the sake of grief—and it split a headache wide open in Michi's skull, like a sledgehammer straight to the skull.

But even still, she wasn't going anywhere.

"Let us in, Etsu," she said, soft but firm. For what might have been the twentieth time, her cell phone vibrated against her ribs. If nothing else, at least Asato and Kurama had gotten her texts. Too bad Kurama and the other ex-Detectives were much too far away to help. This was all on her. "I know you've got a visitor in there. How about making room for three more?"

Yana gawked at her like she'd sprouted a second head, but Kaito hummed in agreement, and then—to Michi's utmost surprise—he leaned past her and shoved the door wide, practically knocking Etsu backward. As soon as the demon stumbled, he strode across the threshold. If not for his Loom and its stark swathes of greenest pine, Michi might've believed his attempt at confidence. As things stood, she just hoped he wouldn't fall apart.

"You can't come in here," Etsu said, and now, emotion did curl inside each syllable, smoldering like coals. Not rage. But panic. Unhinged and wild.

Wincing, rubbing at his neck sheepishly, Yana followed Michi inside and tugged the door closed. "Sorry, Etsu. We gotta."

The demon's answer—whatever it might've been—was lost on Michi. Because up ahead, seated at a kotatsu table, legs folded neatly, waited the bearer of the oil-slick Loom.

A woman. Human, as far as Michi could discern. Older. Her mother's age? Maybe a few years beyond that. But no Genkai, certainly.

And her Loom…

Even now, exposed to it directly, no doors or walls in the way, Michi couldn't see it, not the way she was meant to, not the way she viewed most Looms. In some respects, it was like looking in a funhouse mirror, watching a reflection warp and shimmer and slide out of view. Or maybe like an image refracted beneath clear ocean water, wavering and evanescent, never quite where she expected it to be when she reached below the surf.

But unlike the white threads, her territory didn't riot in answer to the woman's oddity.

Her territory didn't—but _Michi_ did.

Whatever piece of her that had forgotten how to exist without the presence of a thousand Looms stringing her up panicked at the strangeness of this Loom. Its fleeting quality formed an abyss in her stomach, like the feeling right as a rollercoaster crested its highest peak and began to plunge, that half-second when her body still thought it was at the top of hill even though she was already plummeting down, down, down.

Not her territory though.

That was calm. Almost placid.

Which begged the question: _why?_

Stilted and awkward, tossing furtive glances at Michi with every fresh breath, Yana muddled his way through a bow to the woman. "Sorry to interrupt. We're friends of Etsu's."

The woman barely reacted. Only a faint tilt of her head indicated she'd heard Yana at all, and even that was only perceptible thanks to the way her dry, fly-away hair shifted around her shoulders. Her roots—or really, nearly halfway down her locks—had grown in silver, and Michi got the sense hair dye had once played a role in this woman's upkeep, but sometime in the last months, she'd cast such superficialities aside.

Not daring to look away from the woman for even a moment, Michi murmured, "Who's your friend, Etsu?"

The demon had slunk back against the wall, pressing into the plaster as if it were the only think keeping her standing. Confusion unfurled across her threads in a skein of greens and yellows. "I don't know." Her flat, toneless delivery from before had thoroughly evaporated, and now her words rang plaintive and beseeching in Michi's ears.

Without warning, Kaito's breath guttered, a sudden, sharp intake drawing Michi's focus away from the woman for just one precious moment. The boy's skin had gone waxen, his lips pressed into a thin white line. He clutched his glasses, holding them in place as he tossed his head as if to clear his mind of cobwebs.

"Kaito?" Yana clapped a mitt-like hand over his friend's shoulder, shaking him once, but Kaito didn't look at him. He had eyes only for the old woman, and Michi followed suit, certain in a place she could not name that this woman was _dangerous_. A clear and present threat.

Even still, she wasn't ready for what Kaito murmured next.

Truthfully, she never would've been ready.

But that didn't stop Kaito from sagging into Yana's shoulder, his fingers tumbling from his glasses, limp and lifeless. Nor did it stop his words, uttered like a dying man's last plaintive breath.

"My territory is gone."

* * *

AN: I'd say I'm sorry for the cliffie, but... I won't lie to you like that, haha. I've been sitting on this for just about forever, and it was unexpectedly torturous to wait an extra week to post. The good news is: I'm working toward finishing BBL, and once I have, I'll return to weekly updates (though writing this week was dreadful. I write during my breaks at work, and my days were so hectic that I could barely take breaks at all).

I kept the game descriptions relatively vague in the chapter because the exact specifics don't matter to much, but for those curious, Michi and Kurama played Portal 2 as a pair, then once Kuwabara joined (and Yusuke later) they were playing Super Smash Bros. Both are games I love. I couldn't help sneaking them in (even if that does further fudge exactly what year this story takes place in; though the proliferation of cell phones amongst the gang already messed with that anyway).

Dudes. DUDES. You amazing, wonderful, fantastic people completely blew me away last chapter. I hoped it would be well received, but even nearly thirty chapters in, Kurama is still a terrifying enigma to me, so I'm never sure if I'll capture him right on the page. I cannot properly express how much all your fabulous reactions made me feel! Huge thanks to: knightsqueen05, WistfulSin, MoonlitMajick, ChocolateKisses9, Guest, Laina Inverse, Aly Goode, LadyEllesmere, MissIdeophobia, roseeyes, ookawa, Usako, Shell1331, xXGemini14Xx, and Kado-Kattsune!


	29. Grayscale

Gone.

A manifested territory. Gone.

It was a prospect Michi had dreamed of for years. Countless nights, she'd woken in a cold sweat, swimming up from glorious visions in which those words left her own lips, not like the broken utterance that fell from Kaito's but like a prayer answered by the gods.

 _My territory is gone_.

Gone. Disappeared. Terminated. Ended. Severed.

So many words for this possibility she'd begun to think conceivable only in a dreamscape, yet now it had been rendered a reality. Not for her. But for Kaito.

If Kaito's pronouncement had struck Michi numb, it had evoked precisely the opposite reaction in Yana. Though she could no longer remember how to move her muscles, Yana lurched into motion, grabbing at Kaito with both hands. "Gone? What do you mean gone?"

Beyond the gleaming lenses of his glasses, Kaito's eyes shone glassy with incredulity, his threads a stained mess of lime shock and hunter green terror. "I can't open it. It's still there, somewhere. It has to be. But it's not answering. I can't—"

"Come sit, girl."

The woman's voice brought Kaito's near incoherence to a standstill.

Her tenor was like smooth honey, almost melodic, but roughened at the edges, ever so slightly broken. As if she'd gone hoarse from yelling or crying or sheer bad luck, and now her voice was only just returning, still fumbling back to normalcy.

She raised a pale hand, and for the first time, Michi noticed a mass of knitted fabric pooled in her lap. Her other hand remained buried within it, fingers pinching at the threads, and no sooner had she waved at the other seats around the kotatsu than did her first hand rejoin the second.

Beneath her nimble fingers, the knitting in her grip slowly— _methodically_ —unspooled.

Wrapping a bracing arm around Kaito's shoulders, Yana glared at the woman with more baleful ire than Michi had ever seen him muster. Fear drenched his threads in vivid pine, but anger had begun to crackle beneath, black strings staining across his weave. "What have you done to him?"

The woman's lips puckered downward. Annoyance spilled across her strange Loom in a flash of scarlet, and in that moment of change, Michi could at last see her threads clearly. A breath later, they'd blurred back into obscurity. There, but not. Visible, but impossible to process.

Painfully aware of a fresh text buzzing into her phone, Michi stepped past Etsu and into the living room beyond. Behind her, Yana muttered to Kaito, and Kaito hissed in answer, though without glancing back at his Loom, Michi couldn't be sure if he was angry or terrified or some crippling mix of the two. All she knew was that this woman had somehow cut Kaito off from his powers, and if Michi had to guess, the unraveling fabric in the woman's lap was the means by which she'd done.

A Loom.

Right in that woman's hands.

Or a facsimile that was close enough, anyway.

Michi settled at the kotatsu gingerly. Her feet remained tucked within her boots, and kneeling atop their supple leather struck her as decidedly improper. An absurdly unimportant concern at a moment like this, and yet one she took comfort in. If it meant she was still composed, still whole, not yet rocked to her core as Kaito had been, then mistimed manners weren't the worst thing in the world. For as long as she could, she had to hold on to that—had to keep control.

Smoothing her hands across the tops of her thighs, she dipped her head politely. "My name's Michi," she said, offering up an olive branch she wasn't sure she wanted accepted. "You are…?"

"No one."

Michi couldn't stop her brow from furrowing. "Everyone is someone."

"I'm no one _to you_."

Praying that Yana would keep it together long enough to get Etsu out of here, Michi strived to keep her tone as unperturbed as the woman's. "I'm afraid that's just not true. You're here, disturbing a friend of mine." Who she spoke of didn't really matter. Kaito and his missing territory, or Etsu and her riled Loom—either way, this woman was to blame. "That makes you someone."

But Michi's words fell on uncaring ears. The woman had ignored her, staring instead at the trio still gathered in the entryway. "Quiet," she ordered, and then, when Kaito ignored her, still muttering to himself in a fervor, she mumbled under her breath, "Why must they disobey?"

Because _she_ —this odd, detached stranger—was the interloper here, not the one who should be bandying around orders. Because from the glimpse of his Loom hovering at the edge of Michi's vision, it was obvious Kaito was panicking, coming apart at fragile seams Michi hadn't even realized he possessed. Because Etsu had sunk to the floor, clutching at her skull, sobbing and snarling in the spaces between each new breath.

Michi doubted the woman would appreciate any of those answers.

"I'm listened. Isn't that enough?"

The woman's hazel eyes swung back to Michi, but she didn't speak. In her lap, her hands continued stirring, their movement visible only as a constant shifting in her shoulders, her knitting hidden below the edge of the kotatsu.

Michi waited, hoping acknowledgment was coming, anticipating some new vague rebuttal, and yet the silence held. With each second—or was it minutes? Or hours?—that drew on, the woman grew strangely more frantic, her arms rising, her fingers coming into view above the table's lip. They crept over the threads of her knitting, nails scraping across strings, catching in the scratchy wool, tensing, twisting, then letting go and roving onward. Her grip pressed so tight that the blood leeched from her fingertips, turning her flesh white as bone, but her movements were hypnotic, drawing Michi inexorably, captivating her so completely she didn't think to interrupt the woman's work.

Until suddenly, at the door, Yana grunted.

His arms sprung free of Kaito, one thick fist thudding into his ribs as if he were trying to kick start his own heart, and without Yana's support, Kaito crumpled to his knees. His hands curled against the apartment's threadbare rug, knuckles pressing into its plaiting.

"Yana!" Michi gasped, half-rising to her feet. "Kaito!"

Neither answered.

Around them, their Looms burst with visceral explosions of color. Greens so vividly afraid that Michi had to blink and look away, a headache already pounding in her temples like the rattle of machine gun fire. But the distraction had torn her free of the woman's magnetism, and as she squeezed her eyes shut in a useless attempt to escape the Loom, proper thought came back to her.

What exactly was happening to her friends? What magic ran in this woman's fingers? How was she tampering with their Looms?

Precise answers escaped her, but where they led—what they meant—did not.

This brittle slip of a woman was responsible for everything. For Dai and Taki and Ryota. For ruining the halfway house's years of effort. For _all_ of it.

At her feet lay dozens of demon lives, ruined, ripped to tatters by her scuttling, frenetic fingers. That much seemed undeniable. But the _how_ of it, Michi hadn't yet worked out. After all, in all her years under Genkai's tutelage, manipulating the Loom of Life had always remained thoroughly out of reach. She could no more affect the colors she saw than she could block them out.

So how did this woman manage it?

And—far more importantly—how could Michi stop her?

Rising to her knees swiftly, Michi reached over the kotatsu and snagged her fingers in the sloppy remnants of the knitting in the woman's lap, but when she tried to jerk it free, the woman held firm, eyes flying wide. Her gaze locked on Michi, a wild ferocity hidden in the whites around her muddy irises that Michi was unprepared for.

"How are you doing it?" the woman bit out. "Why are you different? Why haven't you succumbed?"

To what? Whatever spell she'd woven over the boys? Whatever curse she'd laid on Etsu, now writhing on the floor, fingers clutching at her face like claws?

Michi had a guess. One she was shocked the woman hadn't concluded before her.

The answer lay in the woman's Loom, in those there-yet-not threads that even now, mere inches away, remained impossible for Michi to hone into focus. Just as Michi couldn't see her own Loom, she could barely see the woman's. The effect wasn't as strong, sure, and the woman's threads still danced at the edges of her perception, but only just, only ever-so-slightly. Not enough to be properly viewed.

In turn, by some trickery Michi didn't understand, her own greater connection to the Loom of Life seemed to be protecting her. Because of her territory, Michi was safe. Somehow, impossibly, she was safe.

For perhaps the first time ever, her territory had rescued her rather than dragged her to ruin.

But if the woman hadn't put those pieces together, Michi wasn't going to tell her. Not while her fingers were still skittering across that stretch of crumpling fabric. Not when the truth might provide the weapon she needed to unravel Michi just as she had the boys.

Instead, there were questions Michi needed to ask— _answers_ she needed to get. Quickly. Before all this got any worse.

"You're the one whose been breaking our transplant apparitions, aren't you?"

Perhaps she shouldn't have named the demons for what they were. Perhaps she should've toed the line, played the game, guarded Spirit World's secrets. Perhaps that's what Asato or Kurama might have done.

But why waste time on futile riddles? This woman knew. She wouldn't be here if she didn't know what Etsu was. Why toss around mysteries when the point of it all this was right there, just out of reach, waiting to be grabbed and dragged into the open?

The woman tilted her head, a single degree. Her half-silvered hair shifted in a ratty wave. "They don't belong in this world."

Ah.

That was it, was it? Why she'd done what she'd had? Because she didn't believe demons had earned a place in Human World.

Still clutching the tattered knitting in one fist, Michi rocked back onto her heels. The fabric stretched between them, holes riddling its surface, threads trailing haphazardly in all directions. "That's not for you to decide."

A sneer tugged the woman's features into a hostile mask. "Why? Because it's _your_ choice? Because you and your ilk want these monsters here?" She leaned forward, jamming the narrow cage of her chest against the kotatsu's edge. "I gave you a chance to remove them. I didn't kill them. I didn't let too many people get hurt. That was supposed to be enough. But it wasn't. You're still protecting them. Putting them somewhere you think I can't reach."

Meaning their relocation efforts, their plans to bring the transplants safely within the ring of psychic seals protecting Genkai's compound. Which, in turn, meant Michi's plan was working. She'd been right. She'd found a way to keep the demons safe.

But for how long?

 _Somewhere you_ think _I can't reach_.

As if this woman knew something Michi didn't. As if the temple wasn't a stronghold that would last forever.

The woman gave Michi no chance to pursue that thought, though. In a flurry, quick as a striking snake, she rose to her feet, yanking on the knitting stretched taut between them as she did so. At once, it lost its unsteady hold on a genuine form. The yarn came apart, collapsing into a tangled heap atop the kotatsu. White surged across the edge of Michi's sight, off in the entryway, vicious and sickening, abolishing the odd calm of her territory in a crush of stomach-churning sensation.

Then those threads began to break. To cleave clear in two. Nearly a fifth of Etsu's Loom all told, shearing in half and evaporating into oblivion.

Still clutching at her head, Etsu began to howl.

"You won't take them away," the woman spat. "Not the way you should. Not the way they deserve. But I can destroy them. I _will_ destroy them."

On tottering, unsteady feet, the woman turned heel and staggered across the living room, headed straight for the door. She passed Yana and Kaito without incident, the boys still undone by whatever witchery she'd worked on them, and she stepped over Etsu's writhing form as if the demon was little more than trash strewn across the floorboards. For one perilous second, Michi imagined chasing after her, tackling her in the hall, pinning her there for however long it took for help to arrive.

But then Etsu screamed again, and Michi realized her cries weren't mere distress. They were fueled by pain, by blinding agony created as the apparition tore at her own skin, her fingers bent like talons, her nails raking across her face and arms and neck. And after that, it didn't matter where the woman was off to, because Etsu needed Michi and the boys needed Michi, and she wouldn't abandon any of them. Not for anything.

Scrabbling to Etsu without even standing properly, Michi grabbed for the demon's arms, managing to ensnare one wrist but missing the other. "Etsu," she gasped. "Etsu, stop. You're okay. It's alright."

If the demon heard her, she gave no sign.

Instead, she turned her claw-like fingers outward, the hand Michi had failed to wrangle slashing across Michi's chest in a downward arc. Nails tore along her collarbone, and a pained cry bubbled in Michi's throat.

"Etsu—"

The hand came again. It caught Michi's jaw this time and ripped lower, scouring wounds into the tender column of her throat. Tears stung in Michi's eyes, but she held on, trying in vain to seize hold of Etsu's free arm, still babbling calming nothingness, anything that might reach Etsu inside her all-consuming panic.

White threads lashed in the space between them. They scorched like brands against Michi's second sight, painful in their intensity. A few more broke, snapping apart, but most held firm, white as fresh-healed scars but steady nonetheless, and that, at least, was something.

Behind her, Yana grunted. Then a rustle of clothing announced him dropping to his knees at Michi's side. "Etsu," he begged. "Stop. We're here to help. Listen to us—"

Without warning, Etsu froze, her nails barely grazing Michi's cheek, about to commence with another scything blow. The demon shuddered, as if fighting her own muscles, but her arm remained motionless, suspended between them.

Kaito hacked out a cough. "My territory's back."

If it was, that explained Etsu's sudden stillness. Kaito must've manifested his territory, and within its perimeter, Etsu couldn't carry on her assault, not on herself nor on Michi. A small miracle, but one Michi clung to desperately.

Yana took over then, easing Etsu's wrist out of Michi's grip. His rumbling voice stayed low, a deep, soothing hum that slowly coaxed Estu in off the edge. The white in her Loom didn't dissipate, but the black rage and crimson frustration lessened, giving way to the painful pinks of sadness and regret.

With Yana in control, the instincts that had kept Michi going faded. In their place, agony burned like fire in her chest and neck. Hot, sticky blood dripped down her throat, and she pressed a hand against her jaw in detached disbelief as she crawled back toward the living room.

The rug beneath her was coarse, almost threadbare in patches, and she noted distractedly how poor a home the halfway house had supplied to Etsu. They could do better. They _should_ do better—

"Michi?"

She snapped back to herself, startled to find Kaito kneeling at her side. His glasses dangled off his nose, thoroughly askew, and his usually tight curls had given way to frizz after he'd dug his fingers through their coils, but the glassiness had left his eyes. "Michi," he said again. "Who was that? What did she do to us?"

His threads blazed against her awareness, a swarming mass of riotous color. She couldn't bring herself to parse out the meaning of the shades, couldn't gather her own thoughts enough to do anything more than hum in vague recognition.

He grimaced, then pulled her hand away from her jaw, analyzing the wound Etsu had carved across her face. Seemingly satisfied, he tipped her chin back with his thumb and studied the other gouges across her throat and chest. "Nothing permanent. These can be healed."

"Mhmm."

A muscle ticked in his jaw. "Do you know what she was doing? Could you see it?" When she made no move to answer, he groaned and stood. He glanced at Yana, still crouched before Etsu, pacifying her with the steady thrum of his voice, then yanked his phone from his pocket. "I'm going to get Kido up here. You're in shock. We need Genkai—"

"Already told him," she mumbled.

Kaito crooked a brow. "When?"

"Texted. Before. Kurama, too."

A bit of tension unwound from Kaito's shoulders. "Good. Then I'm sure they're already enroute." Gritting his teeth, he shoved a hand down to her. "Come on. You should lie down. You're useless like this. "

He hauled her upright and guided her to the couch, maintaining contact with her only long enough for her to find her balance atop the cushions before dropping her arm like a hot coal. "I'm still calling Kido. If that woman returns, he shouldn't be isolated."

Michi offered up another hum, then watched him stalk into the apartment's bathroom and jerk the door closed behind him. Right before the latch caught, she heard his cell phone's faint ringing break off and Asato's voice burst forth, sharp and anxious, but then the door fit home and she couldn't make out anything Kaito said in answer.

Not that she was really trying.

Dully, she fished her own phone from her pocket. Nearly two dozen texts waited for her, an endless stream down her home screen. Kurama. Asato. Asato. Kurama. On and on and on.

Kurama's response had come in first, almost instantaneously after she'd sent her panicked warning. _–If there's an unknown threat, don't engage. Wait for us. We're on our way.–_

Then Asato. _–Too late for that. They're already inside.–_ A second message followed, clarifying quickly. _–I stayed in the car with Saburo. Fuck. I should be in there.–_

There was no way to be certain, from the transcript alone, the tone of Kurama's answer, but Michi suspected she knew it—that precise, calculated way he spoke sometimes. The voice he'd used on their way to Itomori during their failed trip to save Ryota. That careful, practiced delivery she now knew hid turmoil beneath it, a thin layer of glass harboring a maelstrom. _–You broke protocol.–_

The lack of question mark seemed especially telling.

Asato's hostility—and the terror that caused it—wasn't remotely as hard to identify.

– _Screw off with your blame game. Too late to change anything now. I can't leave Saburo.–_ And then another from Asato. _–Why isn't Michi answering?!–_

– _Let's hope it's a choice. Rather than because she can't.–_

– _Fuck you for even suggesting that.–_

What followed was a series of lightning fast texts, Kurama peppering Asato with questions about the specifics and Asato answering back with a whole lot of I-don't-knows. As she scrolled, barely retaining what she read, a half-formed image swam to the forefront of Michi's thoughts. Kurama, sprinting through forests and villages and cities, his phone in hand, frantically typing out texts as he swerved between cars and forded rivers. An absurd imagining. Yet one she couldn't shake.

What was this bizarre life she'd found for herself?

When had the world gotten so weird?

"Michi?"

For the second time in… well, she wasn't sure how long—ten minutes? An hour? Two?—she startled, jolted from her tangled, muddled thoughts as a shadow slanted over her.

A shadow.

Shade.

"Hey," she said.

His threads trailed over his shoulders in a shawl of worried coral, and he gestured for her to move over, to give him space. Obedient, she scooted back and rolled onto her side, creating a sliver of cushion that he sank onto.

"Hell, Michi. What did you do?"

"Tried to figure out who she was." Was that an answer to what he'd asked? Sort of. Right?

"Alone?" He dragged a hand through his bleached locks. "What were you thinking?"

She rolled one shoulder into an attempted shrug. "Somebody needed to."

Exhaling a weighty sigh, he bent over her and wrapped her in an awkward hug, struggling to properly snake his arms around her until she pushed herself upright and snagged her own arms around his waist. She breathed him in. His familiar deodorant. The scent of his detergent, same as the one both their mothers used. The tang of fresh sweat. When he pulled back an eon later, a red stain had spread across the powder blue fabric of his shirt.

Blood.

 _Her_ blood.

"How long has it been?"

"Since you came up here? Three hours, maybe. Since Kaito summoned me, an hour or so."

That long?

She pressed her fingers to her forehead, as if by doing so, she could steady her swirling thoughts. That it had been an hour since the woman left wasn't as much of a surprise as it looked like Asato expected it to be. Somewhere between thoughts of Kurama running through the woods as a fox, she might have drifted into a doze or simply stopped thinking at all.

But two hours with that woman?

Where had all that time gone?

"You're sure he only called you an hour ago?"

Asato cocked his head sideways, his threads shining with lime astonishment. "That's the part of the timeline that's throwing you off?"

"It didn't seem like that long with her."

"It was _forever_ , Meech. If Kaito hadn't called when he did, I was planning on abandoning Saburo in the car and getting my ass up here." His breath caught, and he swallowed down whatever he'd planned to say next, shoving a hand through his hair once more. "Though in retrospect, I wouldn't have been any help. Yana and Kaito don't even know what happened. Last thing Kaito remembers clearly is his territory disappearing, and Yana gets foggy a few minutes after that. Well, except for this weird sensation of _wanting_ they both described, though neither can say exactly what they wanted. I guess, to not move? To not interfere?" He shook his head. "I don't think I get it, really."

"Oh."

He sighed. "Anyway, once that woman escaped, Kaito's territory came back—which I think you know—and theoretically Yana's probably did, too, assuming she blocked it to begin with—and we _are_ assuming that, despite Yana not testing it. From there, Yana was able to get Etsu under control." He jerked his chin toward the closed bedroom door Michi didn't remember identifying, though apparently she had at some point. "He's got her in there. Ten minutes ago, Kaito took Saburo back outside. I brought him up, but seeing you completely zoned out got him agitated. Seemed like fresh air was in order." Gently, he squeezed her knee. "Yusuke and the others should be here soon, then we'll—"

"Soon, Kido?" Yusuke's voice boomed from the doorway, and Michi winced, flattening her palms over her eyes as a territory-induced headache she'd hardly noticed until then reared its head. "Nah. We're already here."

"Quiet," Asato snapped, pitching to his feet. Without him, the couch felt suddenly far too large, readying to engulf her in its crevices completely, but she didn't try to tug him back as he loped across the living room and started rattling off new details in a hushed rant.

The ex-Detectives filed over the threshold like a steady stream. Yusuke first, then Hiei, then Kuwabara. And last of all, his gaze finding her instantly, Kurama.

His Loom was almost entirely obscured behind those of his friends, Yusuke's electric lines and Hiei's cutting sharpness nearly too blinding to see past. But despite them—and the taut strands of the Ties That Bind—she could still spot the faint edges of Kurama's threads. They shone with a green she could've sworn she'd never seen on him before.

A green almost like pine needles.

The green of fear.

She mustered a wave, lofting her hand into the air through sheer force of will, and though his eyes stayed narrowed and tension flattened his lips into a pursed line, that fearful green lessened. Just a touch. Just enough for a flicker of pale blue to flood into place.

He did not, however, appear to miss the blood crusted over the wounds Etsu had scoured across her throat.

Still, he eased the door closed gently as the Detectives moved deeper into the apartment, and all the while, Asato kept up his ramblings. After a minute, Michi gave up trying to hold her head high and slumped exhaustedly into the couch, but when that proved no more restful than listening had been, she wobbled to her feet, pausing for an overly long moment to gather her bearings before traipsing for the bathroom.

If everyone was going to keep noticing her injuries, she might as well see them for herself.

Or not.

Actually, _definitely_ not.

Because as soon as she stepped in front of the bathroom mirror and saw the blood dried along her jaw in a splatter of rust brown ruin, an overwhelming sense of vertigo nearly brought her to her knees. Not because of the blood. Not really. On its own, blood was just blood. She'd never been a queasy person, never the one prone to passing out when someone broke an arm or when high school biology classes called for dissections.

But this wasn't really about the blood, was it?

This was about that woman. About what she'd tried to do—to the boys and to Etsu and to Michi, too. About what she'd already done to transplants like Taki and Ryota.

About what she might still do.

Gnawing on her inner cheek, Michi tugged open Etsu's linen closet and yanked out a hand towel. Her blood might stain the pewter terrycloth, but if it did, she could always buy the apparition another. Right now, all that mattered was getting this blood off—and seeing what sort of carnage lay beneath.

She ran the tap for a minute, testing its temperature with a finger before soaking the cloth and pressing it to her tender jaw. The work that followed consumed her, long seconds drawing into minutes as she worked the towel over the gouges Etsu had shorn across her body. So preoccupied was she that when Kurama stepped into the doorway and cleared his throat, she jumped in surprise, jabbing her cheek painfully with the cloth.

"Sorry," he said softly. "Didn't intend to startle you."

She winced, glancing in the mirror, convinced her jaw must've started bleeding again. "Not your fault. I'm a bit out of it."

"Understandably so."

Letting the towel drop into the sink, she shot him a weak, sidelong roll of her eyes. "Somehow, I imagine none of you would go into shock over… well, anything. And certainly not over something as little as this." She flapped a hand toward her ravaged chest, and a bloom of palest coral awoke in Kurama's Loom in answer.

There was nothing romantic or sexual or even remotely comforting in the way his critical gaze swept over her. If anything, his attention was clinical. Appraising and sharp, but interested only in the facts, in just how injured she was or wasn't.

After a beat, he said, "You're right. Shock is a response we've all left long in the past. But that's no more a comment on you than it is on us."

She started to shake her head, ready to fight him on her weakness, but he stopped her in tracks as he left the doorway and drew closer. His lithe fingers drew the hand towel from her grip and he ran fresh water, rinsing it. Her blood spiraled in pink rivulets down the drain.

She shuddered.

Deftly, he squeezed excess water from the cloth, then shifted to face her. "May I?" he asked, lifting the towel in question.

Swallowing raggedly, she titled back her head. "Gently."

"Of course."

The going was quicker under Kurama's capable hands. In short order, he's cleaned the last of her jawline, washed what little blood had dried across her cheek, and moved on to her throat. Beyond the bathroom door, the others were talking. Asato had finally tapered off, and now Yusuke was batting around insane ideas about how they might track the woman down, but Michi could tell he was just biding his time. They all were, because they were waiting on her, the only person who actually knew what had happened. Jamming her eyes closed, she tried to quiet the roaring between her ears as Kurama rinsed the towel a final time before turning his ministrations to her collarbone. That wound stung most sharply, and she couldn't help a sudden intake of breath.

"Sorry," he murmured.

She didn't manage an answer, remaining focused instead on the simple act of counting her heartbeats, willing them to slow down, to return to normalcy, to a pace too regular and steady to be counted at all.

At last, as Kurama draped the towel over the sink's lip, she forced her eyes back open. Once her vision cleared, she discovered he was all she could see—his viridian eyes, his scarlet hair, his gentle smile.

And his purple threads.

His threads that were too deeply purple for mere affection.

Whatever he must've seen answering in her eyes sent his smile skewing sideways, and he reached a tentative thumb up to the side of her jaw that was gash-free, then said, "This isn't a request you can truly promise to fulfill nor once I'm so imprudent to think I can demand from you, and yet I can't help but ask it, just this once."

"Oh? Well, shoot, I guess."

He laughed, though she couldn't quite spot the humor in it. "Do me a favor, would you? Can you try to avoid getting into trouble when I'm hours away?"

Her teeth sank into her lip. "Trust me, it wasn't part of the plan."

"I know that."

She spoke up again before he could continue. "And regardless, even if I'm a mess _now_ , I had to do something _then_. If I was in the same position, I'd do it again. I won't be somebody's damsel. I won't let down my transplants, not if I can help it—"

His thumb slid over her lips. She went quiet.

"I know that, too, Michi."

Oh.

Right.

Soft as the whisper of wind through blades of grass, he added, "But that was still the most chilling text I've ever received."

Her breath caught in her throat, lodged beside her heart. It took her a moment to find her voice again. Once she did, she pulled back from his thumb. "Maybe you don't text enough human girls," she said with a forced laugh. "Trust me, I wouldn't have to scroll far back to find a text from Yurie about the world ending because her favorite mascara tube has run dry." As his brows climbed toward his hairline in dry disbelief, she tacked on, "I mean, really. What's one creepy psychic next to a makeup crisis?"

Seemingly despite himself, cobalt swathes spilled across his Loom. "Michi, I'm being perfectly serious."

And he was.

She could tell he was.

"I know. But serious is… not what I need right now."

A sigh escaped him, funneling out his nose, but then he swept his thumb across her cheek and nodded. "Of course. I—"

"Oy, you two," Yusuke bellowed from the living room, cutting Kurama off, all of Asato's warnings about staying quiet apparently long forgotten. "Get your asses out here. I'm all out of patience."

This time, the amusement in Kurama's Loom was joined by equal doses of weary gray and exasperated crimson. "Well, you're in luck," he muttered to Michi. "Yusuke rarely does serious."

Too bad, then, that everything she was about to tell them was nothing short of grave. The sort of grave that led to tombstones and _actual_ graves.

Even Yusuke's humor wouldn't be enough to offset that.

* * *

She told them everything. Her suspicions about the woman's powers. As much as she could recall of the woman's threats. The way she'd shredded that square of knitting until it had unspooled entirely. How Michi had found herself inexplicably captivated by the dance of the woman's fingers.

And lastly, the woman's parting declaration.

 _I_ will _destroy them._

"Then she… I don't know how to put it. Tore Etsu's Loom apart. Cleaved her threads into pieces."

Cleaved.

It was the only word for it. The only way to describe how cleanly the woman sheared through Etsu's threads, how absolutely she'd severed Ryota's.

A stiffness hung in the silence between them, and though the ex-Detectives were arrayed all around her, a tight ring around Etsu's couch, though Asato was right there at her side, his hands curled into fists atop his knees, in that moment, looking at them all, remembering how it felt to be alone against that woman as Yana and Kaito and Etsu fell to pieces, Michi had never felt more isolated—more unlike these men who'd welcomed her into their folds. They were right there, and yet, they were so very far away.

When Asato spoke, breaking the quiet that had fallen, that gulf only yawned wider.

"Well," he said slowly—uncertainly. "We can't keep calling her 'the woman.' She needs a name." His fists flexed, knuckles straining white as his eyes found Michi's. "Is going with the Unweaver too on the nose?"

The world shifted on its axis.

With a bark of startled laughter, Yusuke declared the name perfect, and simultaneously, Kuwabara muttered it under his breath, rolling it across his tongue as if testing out the fit, but Michi wasn't so quick to agree. A knot in her throat, she tore her gaze from Asato, looking instead to the kotatsu—and the jumble of yarn strewn across its surface.

The Unweaver.

It was a name that drew a line straight to Michi, whether Asato had meant it to or not. A name that connected her to that woman inextricably, like they were two sides of the same coin, like they were two disparate halves of a single whole.

After all, if there was an Unweaver, didn't there have to be a Weaver, too?

* * *

AN: Slightly early post because I'm going away this weekend. Gotta do all sorts of packing and I'm not sure I'd have time to get this up in the morning, so up it goes now! And on that note: a very happy New Years to all of you! Here's to 2017 resting in infamy and to 2018 being the year the world gets back on track.

(Random aside: I've started thinking of 2016, 2017, and 2018 like a book trilogy, both in terms of my personal life and the world at large. 2016: the start of the adventure, some minor baddies along the way, and then, just as victory seems in hand, the true nemesis rears its head. 2017: the insufferable second book of the series; always worse than the first, always ending in a very 'dark night of the soul' type moment. And then, hopefully, if the universe is willing, 2018: the thrilling conclusion, where the baddies get got and the good guys emerge, battered and changed but ultimately victorious. So, um, yeah. I hope we all have a badass 2018 worthy of a series conclusion. /endweirdramble)

Speaking of arcs, I reckon this chapter marks the end of BBL's second arc. Shorter than the first (which ended around Ch. 17) by chapters, though in word count, they may be comparable, but pretty pivotal in shifting Michi toward who she's going to become. And now, at long last, we have a face (and a name!) for the person behind everything that's gone wrong for the halfway house. I am so very, very excited.

As always, endless thanks to the glorious lovely souls who reviewed last chapter. I love you all. You're a huge part of what keeps me hammering away at the keyboard each day. All the following folks are simply the best: MissIdeophobia, LadyEllesmere, knightsqueen05, Kristy Himura, o-dragon, Laina Inverse, WistfulSin, Vulvarity, Guest, roseeyes, Shell1331, MoonlitMajick, SlytherclawQueen, and ahyeon!

And with that, happy New Years! See you on the flip side.


	30. Prismatic Pearl

Their plans didn't change in the wake of the Unweaver's emergence.

Newfound urgency invigorated them, and Michi insisted that she return to at least six withdrawals a week—a proposition Kurama didn't even fight her on—but the actual in-and-outs of their strategy remained unaltered. Just as before, everything revolved around getting transplants to Genkai's as quickly and efficiently as possible.

That said, the rules grew more stringent.

Genkai proclaimed a firm, unwavering declaration: going forward, at least one ex-Detective must present at every extraction. Two, if they could swing it. There'd be no more trips where the only operatives were Michi and her boys. Asato, Yana, and Kaito might be skilled, but they weren't fighters, not the way the Detectives were.

Though, in truth, Michi doubted that mattered.

She voiced her concern only once, on the night after their run-in with the Unweaver, when their whole outfit gathered in Keiko, Shizuru, and Yukina's apartment once again and patched Genkai in on speaker phone. Michi had waited for a lull in the conversation, then cleared her throat and spoke up.

"This isn't a comment on anyone's abilities, so I hope it's not taken that way," she said as preface, glancing first at Yusuke and Kuwabara sprawled on a couch, then to Hiei slumped against the windowsill, and last of all at Kurama, perched atop a stool from the kitchen's breakfast bar. "From what I saw the Unweaver do to Kaito and Yana and Etsu, I don't think anyone will fare any better against her than they did. If she can just disable their powers—and it certainly seems like she can—then what good is Yusuke or Kurama or anyone else."

Yusuke stiffened at her implication, but Kurama merely dipped his chin in agreement. "A fair point. But even if she's capable of what you fear, ultimately, we're better versed in combat, and therefore most likely to find a means of retaliation, if for no other reason than our expansive experience."

A whole bunch of complex, technical words that ultimately boiled down to: _hush up, Michi. We've already decided. This discussion is just a formality._

She tried not to bristle, tried not to get defensive. This was, after all, their forte, not hers.

That knowledge didn't matter; she bristled, anyway.

But then Genkai's voice came bursting through the speaker of the communication device Botan had propped open atop the coffee table, and she put the matter well and truly to rest. "Your worries are duly noted, Kuroki, but the directive still stands. I want at least one of the old team present for each withdrawal." A gruff pause, then, "And no more separation. You all go in, or no one does. That's a rule for a reason."

So Michi shut up, swallowed down her frustration, ducked her chin, and let the rest of the meeting run without interruption. But she knew she was right. The Detectives were out of their depth with the Unweaver, whether they wanted to admit it or not. That much she certain of with instinctual surety, deep in the place inside her soul where her territory hunkered. Whatever fight awaited them wasn't going to be one waged with fists and swords and energy attacks.

It was going to be an entanglement of Looms.

Too bad all she could do now was hope that it never came down to an I-told-you-so.

* * *

It took nearly six weeks, but Keiko and Michi eventually found time to have that dinner they'd promised each other.

They met in downtown Mushiyori on the first day Michi took off from extractions after their run in with the Unweaver. She'd sensed a lecture about over-extending herself coming in her immediate future—if not from Kurama, then certainly from Asato—and she chose to beat them to the punch, asking in one of their planning sessions for Asato to lead the extraction of one of her demons in her place. Then, as the men worked out the ensuing details, she'd left them in the girls' living room and joined Keiko in the kitchen. Ten minutes later, they'd concocted the plan that brought them together in Mushiyori.

An intended hour of shopping quickly blurred into two, then three, as Keiko and Michi swapped roles as tour guide, bringing each other to all their favorite stores, the hidden gems it had taken Michi years to uncover. How she'd never stumbled upon the treasure troves Keiko showed her absolutely boggled her mind, and when at last they agreed it was time to sate their ravenous appetites, three new dresses lay neatly folded within the bag hung from Michi's shoulder. A good haul, considering how ruthlessly picky she tended to be.

Michi deferred to Keiko on dinner, and the girl brought them to a noodle shop Michi had never tried before. The seating and service were informal—order at the counter, then wait for the meal to be delivered to one of the four battered tables tucked along the wall—but when the food came, it was as delicious as Keiko had promised.

"I never would've guess their noodles were so good," Michi whispered, careful not to let her voice carry to the cooks behind the counter. "How'd you discover this place?"

Keiko grinned. "Well, my parents run a restaurant in Sarayashiki, and you've been to Yusuke's ramen cart, right? Over the years, I've sort of kept an eye on the competition. Not because I'm worried about my family's regulars or anything, but just to see what's out there, to know what else is catching on. I found this place, gosh, three years ago, maybe? Four? It's not often that I'm in this part of Mushiyori, so any time I am, this is a required stop."

"I can see why." Michi chewed through another mouthful, eyes closing in delight. "Or I should say, taste why."

Keiko laughed, the notes charming and bright.

And suddenly this moment felt so normal, so every day and commonplace—so human. Like Keiko was a friend Michi had made on campus. Or, dare she think it, like they were just two regular girls introduced to each other by their run-of-the-mill boyfriends, who ended up hitting it off, no boyfriends necessary.

Which wasn't true.

Of course, it wasn't.

For one thing, Kurama wasn't Michi's boyfriend anymore. Maybe someday they'd get back there, but that time wasn't here yet, and even if it were, there was no forgetting the circumstances that had brought together, not necessarily Keiko and Michi, but definitely Kurama and Yusuke.

Spirit World. Demons. Psychics.

Those things never really went away.

But maybe sometimes they receded. Maybe every once and a while, Michi could have days where she was nothing more than a girl out shopping with a friend. Better yet, maybe the fact that they _did_ both know about the three worlds and all the arcane insanity those realms brought with them was precisely what made this moment feel worth lingering in.

Because Keiko got it.

She got the stress of not quite knowing what Kurama truly was. She understood the unfathomable complexity of introducing a half-demon boyfriend to a bunch of unsuspecting humans and forever keeping them none the wiser. And even though Keiko couldn't empathize with the whole manifested territory gambit, she was still better equipped to appreciate what it entailed than Runa or Yurie or Nanako could ever be.

In light of all that, it probably shouldn't have surprised Michi that she ended up back at Keiko's apartment that night, fit snugly on the couch between Keiko and Yukina, watching a movie while Shizuru worked at their backs, weaving their hair into complex up-dos simply for the heck of it.

The Unweaver was out there—Michi could never forget that, not now that they'd met, not now that she'd seen the woman's work firsthand—but it was okay for there to be other things in Michi's life, too. Such as newfound friends, sliding into gaps in her life she hadn't even realized she'd been harboring. Filling voids whose aches she hadn't recognized until they were gone.

* * *

Gaming nights became a tradition.

Michi wasn't sure who initiated the habit.

Had it been Yusuke on the dreary Tuesday evening after they'd extracted a shapeshifting transplant from the outskirts of Tokyo? The Loom of the demon—Chiyo—had been almost entirely consumed in white, and though his threads had not begun snapping, he'd been little better than comatose when they discovered him in his home. Kuwabara had carried him outside, but then they'd wavered, unsure how to get him to Genkai's since he couldn't manage it under his own power. In the end, they'd bundled him aboard a train with Hiei, leaving Michi, Yusuke, and Kuwabara to make their way back to Mushiyori together. By the time they arrived home, Kurama was waiting, takeout orders steaming on the guys' kitchen counter. At some point between serving themselves heaping plates and those dishes making it into the sink, Yusuke had fired up the console and controllers had found their way into everyone's hands.

The dishes weren't washed for hours.

But maybe that hadn't been the day it became ritual.

Instead, had it been Kuwabara, three days after Chiyo's extraction? He'd sent a group text—Michi still wasn't quite sure when he'd gotten her number—declaring that Friday a day from literal hell, thanks to a test he was sure he'd bombed and an extraction with Yana that went less than smoothly. His precise words had shocked Michi with their vulgarity. Somehow, of all the Detectives, it actually surprised her most for Kuwabara to start spouting off about Demon World shitholes.

Yet the text had arrived, a barrage of all caps madness, and a second later, another had followed, demanding a rematch after the humiliating defeat Yusuke had dealt him on Tuesday.

So a rematch was had. And then a rematch for the rematch. And on and on.

Even still, Michi couldn't be sure that Friday was the day that sealed the tradition in stone. It could've been the Monday after, when she found that instead of heading home after a withdrawal, she exited the subway with Yusuke at the stop for the guys' apartment.

Or maybe it was that Wednesday, as she rode home with Kurama and Hiei. Yet again, she found herself deboarding two stops early, not even thinking about it this time, too lost in conversation to realize what her feet had done. It was only as she dropped her bag at the door, toed off her boots, and headed for her usual spot on the couch that she realized she'd come here as comfortably as she'd ever visited Asato. Somehow, when she wasn't looking, these boys had found the cracks in her walls and wormed inside, sneaking past the last crumbling remnants.

Truthfully, she couldn't say she minded.

Especially not once Hiei sank onto the couch at her side, snagged a controller, and held it between his legs, an elbow braced on each knee. "I'm sick of you all prattling about these games. Show me how to play, so I can end this nonsense."

From his room down the hall, Kuwabara howled with laughter, then came running. "Really, short stack? You think you can beat any of us?"

"Well, I can certainly best you."

Cackling, Yusuke started up the console. "He's always been right before, Kuwabara!"

Kuwabara roared, Yusuke only laughed harder, and through the chaos, Kurama caught Michi's eyes, his smile small and warm and somehow the most joyful she'd ever seen grace his lips.

In the end, that was probably the moment that made gaming nights a locked in part of their routine—Hiei with a controller, Kuwabara squawking indignantly, and the Ties That Bind stretched across the room in a latticework of rose quartz love.

* * *

"We need a new arena," Yusuke declared on the second Saturday after the Unweaver's appearance. Punching a button on his controller, he paused the fight they were in the midst of onscreen and scooted sideways to face Michi. "We're too evenly matched at this."

True.

They'd gone back and forth for nearly an hour, churning through round after round as a thunderstorm raged outside, and yet, a dozen matches in, no conclusive victor had yet to emerge.

Staving off a smile, she asked, "Wait, Urameshi, are you telling me you'll only have fun if you're kicking my butt?"

"Duh."

From his armchair by the window, a textbook cracked open in his lap, Kuwabara snickered. "Put him in his place, Kuroki."

Yusuke rolled his eyes. "Shut up, you," he barked, yanking a pillow from behind his back and hurling it Kuwabara's way. His Loom glittered with teal happiness and cobalt amusement, shining like seafoam waters under a brilliant sunset. "What I was actually thinking is that we need something we can team up on. Why wail on each other when we could make other people cry?"

"Other people?" she asked, crooking a brow.

"Or computers. Whatever. Point being, let's tag team some shit."

She couldn't say the idea wasn't appealing. The only story driven co-op game she'd played here so far was the puzzle-platformer she'd started with Kurama, and something told her that wasn't the sort of game Yusuke was envisioning. "Well, out with the details, then," she said. "What do you propose?"

At once, he rattled off a dozen options, most of them shooters, none of which she'd tried before. In the end, she let him pick, and as he talked her through a rundown of the controls, Kuwabara set aside his book in order to watch them get started.

That morning, she'd performed a withdrawal with Yusuke, Kurama, and Asato. She'd ridden out on the train with Kurama, falling asleep in the seat beside him while Yusuke and Asato debated the finer points of some street fighter game she'd never heard of in the row ahead, but once they'd collected her transplant—one whose Loom was thankfully almost wholly intact—Kurama had peeled off with the demon, running him back to Genkai's. Asato had returned with Michi and Yusuke to the guys' apartment, and he'd hung around for a bit. Then the weather app on his phone clued him in to an oncoming thunderstorm and he'd bolted off home before it arrived, intent on organizing extractions for the next week.

Kuwabara had joined them not long after, his normally orange curls gone brown and flat thanks to the deluge now pouring down outside. He'd returned on the heels of a transplant recall of his own, though unlike Michi, he wasn't free now that Hiei had escorted their demon to the shrine. In his own words, college was kicking his butt, and he had a whole pile of assignments left to complete.

Now, though, he'd abandoned his studying charade, eyes locked on the loading screen flashing on the television. "The learning curve on this game is just evil, Urameshi. You're setting her to fail."

"Eh, I don't think so." Yusuke shot her a lopsided grin. "The kid's good. She'll be able to handle it."

Michi gnawed absently on her thumb, running back through the instructions he'd given, trying to commit the lot to memory. "I fear your faith is misplaced. First-person shooters are not my strong suit."

"Then I'll carry the team until you get used to it. It'll be f—"

Whatever he planned to say next—fine or fun or some other adjective Michi didn't bother trying to unearth—never made it off his tongue before the door in the foyer clattered open. A second later, Hiei stalked into the living room and kicked off his boots, heedless of the way they clattered against the baseboard, leaving behind muddy footprints. "I detest this pitiful excuse of a world," he snarled, threads staining with crimson annoyance that matched the crackling irritation clipping his words short.

Following a few paces behind the fire demon, Kurama appeared. He closed the door gently, as if using the appropriate degree of care could offset Hiei's brutality. "Now, Hiei, to be fair, you can't blame the entire world for a rainstorm."

"Don't start with me, fox. I don't have the patience."

Kuwabara slapped his thigh and heaved a hearty—and unabashedly fake—laugh. "You mean Saint Hiei has run out of his signature serenity? Oh, whatever will we do?"

The distinctive clink of a sword unsheathing silenced any further mockery from Kuwabara, but he glowered at Hiei anyway, muttering words Michi couldn't make out under his breath. His Loom wove itself into an even mix of lavender affection and scarlet exasperation—like this was a fight they'd had a hundred times and he'd happily have a thousand times more—but for all the speed with which Kuwabara quieted, there was no true fear in his threads.

Chuckling, Yusuke leaned back into the couch, spreading his arms along its back, his controller dangling from one lazy hand. "Did the little fire demon get wet? How unfortunate."

"I'll kill the lot of you."

"I doubt that," Kurama said at the same time as Yusuke barked, "You can try."

Michi shook her head at their antics, then shifted more firmly into the armrest of the couch, creating space if either of the newcomers wanted to sit. "Your drop-offs went well?"

Kurama had bent down to unlace his shoes, and he paused a moment to look up and find her eyes. "They certainly did, and better still, I've formed a hypothesis I think you'll be interested in hearing."

"Oh?"

Hiei scoffed. Disappearing into the kitchen, he spat over his shoulder, "He's been a smug, pretentious prick about this theory of his for hours. Make him shut up about it."

Yusuke sniggered into the heel of his hand. "I swear, Kuwabara, you should adopt Hiei. He's basically a cat at this point. Get him a little wet, and he throws himself a tantrum. He'd fit right in with Eikitchi."

Though Kuwabara's Loom lit with cobalt humor to match Yusuke's own, he didn't miss so much as a beat in his answer. "Strong pass."

Out of sight but most certainly not out of hearing range, Hiei snapped, "I will gut you both and feed your innards to that idiotic animal myself."

An amused smile flitted about the edges of Kurama's lips as he stepped free of his shoes, but it wasn't until he'd shrugged out of his jacket and hung it to dry on the doorknob of the coat closet that Michi realized he'd had a bag slung over one shoulder. While he'd worked free of his sleeves, he'd been careful not to let it drop, and he kept firm hold of it as he crossed to the coffee table.

He knelt on the far side of the table, uninterested—at least for now—with the cushion Michi had cleared for him. "For the last few months, I've been studying the Loom of Life," Kurama said, and at once, Yusuke began waggling his eyebrows, first at Michi, then at Kurama, then at the space between them. If Kurama noticed the bizarre dance of Yusuke's forehead, he gave no indication, instead continuing on without pause. "Even prior to confirming the Unweaver's personhood, it was clear enough that we needed to understand how the connections between an individual's Loom and the greater Loom of the world could be intentionally—or even accidentally—altered. To that end, Genkai lent me her best texts on the matter, though unfortunately, even their knowledge base is relatively sparse. Psychics capable of reading the Loom are not unheard of—as I'm sure you know, Michi—but they're not particularly common either, and it's a practice that has fallen largely out of use. As a result, though there's a fair number of anecdotal stories about manipulation of the Loom, there's very little described in a sense that is even remotely scientific."

As he spoke, he unzipped his backpack and withdrew a series of books, three all told. He lay one after another atop the coffee table. They were thick, leather-bound tomes, titles gilded across their fronts in delicate scripts. Wear had frayed the edges of their bindings, and even though they remained closed, Michi could already spot evidence of where exposure to moisture had rippled and warped the pages.

Her heart skipped a beat as a memory clicked into place. She'd seen these books before, back in Kurama's room at Genkai's. Riddled with a territory-induced headache, she hadn't paid their finer details much mind then, but she was sure nonetheless. There were the books he'd thumbed through during that first wounded, guarded conversation they'd had after she learned who and what he truly was.

Studying for months, he'd said.

Unlike Yusuke and his waggling brows, she wasn't so conceited to have assumed his research revolved around understanding her—and clearly, that was not the case. But nor was she naïve enough to think he must not have at least thought of her each time he sat down to make sense of the Loom's mysteries.

The prospect set loose a thousand butterflies within her ribs, and they fluttered around her chest cavity, fragile wings battering at her heart.

Apparently, Yusuke wasn't as moved.

He squinted at the texts like a caveman might ogle a television, then reached out a finger to poke the one closest to him, earning himself a reproachful glare from Kurama. Quickly, he retreated back to his own space, shoving his hands under his butt as if to protect his wayward digits. "So you've been reading a lot. Got it."

"Must you simplify quite so thoroughly?"

Yusuke shrugged. "Look, if you wanted the rest of us to be part of your brain trust, then you shouldn't have hogged all the smart juice. You probably sucked it out of Sarayashiki's water supply with your dumb plants and left none for my pea-sized brain." Seemingly pleased with the absurd line of his thinking, Yusuke formed his hand into a finger gun and pointed it Kurama's way. "It's your fault I flunked out of school. Mystery officially solved."

Despite the waning patience that seemed to be clouding Kurama's eyes, Michi couldn't help adding, "I think you're missing a prime opportunity for a nice use of 'case closed,' Detective."

A grin split Yusuke's features wide, and he threw up a hand for high five. "Rewind your memories and insert what she said, would ya?"

Rubbing at the furrow creasing his brow, Kurama said with feigned politeness, "If you're done, can we move on?"

"Yeah, shut it, Urameshi," Kuwabara said. "I want to know where Kurama is going with this."

Hiei returned from the kitchen, a bowl of leftovers he must've absconded from the fridge steaming in his hands. "Get on with it, fox. Before he starts rambling again."

Yusuke made a great show of indignant hurt, though his threads stayed lit with teal cheer and a healthy dose of cobalt amusement, but Kurama ignored his theatrics.

"Right, then," Kurama said, tapping the cover of the leftmost book. "What I've discovered is this: as catalogued in this text, there have been minimal cases in which a psychic could repeatedly alter the Loom of Life. Less than ten have managed the feat in the last four hundred years, and of them, only three succeeded on more than two occasions. The Unweaver, on the other hand, appears to be capable of doing so at will. The changes she's wrought on our transplants outnumber all the feats of these recorded psychics combined.

"From what I've read, it seems part of her predecessors' follies lay in a misunderstanding of the Loom. Many falsely believed the threads to be strings of fate—the machinations of a god guiding lives on set tracks—and, a result, wasted much of their efforts attempting to alter the future rather manipulating the present. Obviously, the Unweaver isn't making this mistake."

No, that she wasn't.

It had been all too easy to recognize the woman was working with intention. Her fingers might've danced with frantic energy, but their movements themselves had not been haphazard. The Unweaver had known her goals and—barring Michi—she'd brought them to fruition.

"Sounds like you haven't figured out much," Kuwabara said, frowning.

"I'm not done yet."

"Oh." Kuwabara straightened, rubbing sheepishly at his neck, silver pooling in his Loom. "Sorry."

Undeterred, Kurama splayed his fingers atop the center books. "The psychics who were more consistently successful are briefly profiled in these histories on notable human spiritualists. All of them lived over a hundred years ago, and proper detail is somewhat lacking, but each gained notoriety for their abilities to soothe troubled souls—presumably, through influence over the Looms of their patients."

"You're being vague," Michi said.

His eyes flashed up to hers, recognition flashing within their jewel-tone depths. It was a refrain that had become common between them, arising any time he wove too deeply into his own mental circles. Now, staring at her across these books he'd studied so painstakingly, he smiled wryly at the callout.

"Unfortunately, it's hard to be more specific when the materials I'm drawing from are no clearer. That said, today's epiphany—if it even warrants such a word—wasn't really about the Unweaver's powers."

Michi raised her brows in a question echoed moments later by Yusuke's sharp declaration for Kurama to: "Just spit it out already."

Kurama's gaze darted to Yusuke just long enough to glare him into silence, then looked back to Michi. "My theory pertains to you. You and your territory."

"How so?"

"If you'll all remember, Genkai explained her theory that the span of Michi's territory currently doesn't extend beyond her own eyes. Theoretically, it could be as narrow as her optic nerve."

Hiei drew closer, slurping up a mouthful of noodles before asking, "What of it?"

A brief flicker of red skipped through Kurama's threads. "If you'd all stop ask question and instead just listen, I'd be able to tell you."

Lacing his hands behind his head, Yusuke slumped further into his seat and kicked his feet up on the coffee table—careful, despite his outward appearance, not to damage Kurama's books. "We should work on your delivery. Quick and to the point. That's—"

"Yusuke, if you value the continued presence of your tongue as a connected piece of your body, you won't say another word."

The click of Yusuke's jaw was audible.

Still, Kurama let quiet hold for five more seconds, seemingly waiting to see if anyone else needed to fit in an outburst. Only when the silence continued undisturbed did he shift his palm to the third and final book. "This is one of a series of volumes containing firsthand accounts by human psychics. There's only one entry in all thirteen volumes that related to the Loom, but that account was illuminating, to say the least.

"The psychic talks at length about her experience using her spirit energy to access the Loom. I'll admit, it took me a few read-throughs to make the connection I since have, but once I did…" Picking up the book, he flipped to an earmarked page. "I'll spare you the tedium of the full description, but in essence, the woman talks repeatedly of moving beyond her own body in order to, as she puts it, commune with the Loom. Unlike the Unweaver, she wasn't breaking threads. Seems more like she used her talents to soothe or awake particular emotions. But to make that possible, she had to shift her spirit energy outward."

He looked up from the words he'd been skimming on the page as he spoke, his eyes finding Michi. "I think you need to do the same. If you can expand your territory, you may be able to more directly influence the threads of our transplants—not to shear them apart as the Unweaver does, but to put them back together and banish the white."

For a long moment, Michi said nothing. Her voice had abandoned her, chased off by the enormity of Kurama's proposal.

 _Expand_ her territory.

Embrace it, rather than run from it.

An impossibly unfathomable proposition—or, at least, it would've been mere months ago. But now? Having met the Unweaver? Having seen what she'd done to so many of their demons? Having lost Ryota?

Nothing was unfathomable anymore.

So she found her voice, clawed it back from its terror-fueled escape, and scrounged for words. To her surprise, they weren't actually hard to find.

"I have no idea how to do that, but I'll try. If nothing else, it's worth a shot."

* * *

AN: All the bonding moments in this chapter were so dang fun to come up with. Some much needed girl time, more gaming, and a whole lot of Yusuke's silly nonsense. It was a blast rereading this one to edit, and I hope it was equally fun for all of you. (If anyone is interested, sometime this weekend, I'll be reblogging a post I made about the Super Smash Bros. characters each of the guys would play during these gaming sessions. Find me at "hereafteryyh" on Tumblr if you're curious!)

This week kicked my butt in all sorts of ways, and I'm largely drawing blank on what to say here, so I'll leave you with a huge, HEARTY bout of love for all your wonderful peeps who read this fic, and especially to those of you who review. You are, quite simply, the best, and it's all your kindness and support that keeps me coming back to the keyboard even when life leaves me exhausted.

Ginormous heapings of love for: MissIdeophobia, LadyEllesmere, knightsqueen05, roseeyes, Laina Inverse, Star Charter, o-dragon, DizyWillow, Kuesuno, Aspendragon, Pia, WistfulSin, and Shell1331.

(P.S. Shell, believe it or not, I'd written Hiei joining their gaming sessions without even remembering it. I outright laughed when I discovered his involvement.)


	31. Stumbling Silver

"I suspect," Kurama said as Michi fit her key into the lock the day after he revealed his theory about her territory, "that I won't make the best test subject."

The apartment door opened under Michi's guiding hand, swinging inward, accompanied by the tinkling jangle of her keys as she withdrew them. Inside, Michi tugged off her boots and wriggled out of her coat, glancing as surreptitiously as she could through her bangs at Kurama. He shed his outerwear with the grace she'd grown accustomed to—the impossible fluidity of his movements now so unremarkable to her that she only noticed it when she paid attention, when she looked for the reminders that he wasn't like her, not truly.

Had he always moved _this_ effortlessly? She'd certainly picked up on it before, even as far back as their first trip to the botanical gardens. He'd been as silent as the fox she now knew he was while she'd lumbered around like an elephant loosed in an antique shop. Though _that_ , she suspected, had been another of his tests, and perhaps not the best incident to judge his prior movement on.

So then, had his grace always been this innate? Was she simply aware of it now because she knew to look for signs that he wasn't human, not in the way she was? Or had he let his guard down? Had he dropped his pretense of the fumbling, faltering athleticism most humans possessed in favor of his true poise?

In the end, it didn't really matter. This was who he was, and regardless of _why_ she was seeing it when she hadn't before, at least she _was_ cognizant of it.

That's what she'd asked for after all—and with every passing day, every smile meant just for her, every moment when he bared his inner-workings and rendered himself vulnerable, it was getting harder and harder to think of reasons to hold him at a distance.

Clearing her throat, Michi tore her gaze from his profile and slipped into the living room on stocking-covered feet, gliding across the floorboards. "You might not be. But this was your idea. If it's going to crash and burn, you should at least be there to shoulder some of the fault."

He laughed, and the low, thrumming hum of it made Michi's toes curl within her tights. "Any perceived failure is only that, Michi. Perception. I'm asking you to alter your territory in a fundamental, potentially inconceivable manner. Grant yourself a little forgiveness if it doesn't come easily."

Paused halfway between the couch and kitchen, Michi turned to him and planted her palms square on her hips. "I hope you're not planning to sound quite so pretentious while you teach me."

Another laugh, this time following by a bloom of cobalt across his threads. A breath later, in a move she was certain he meant to throw her off balance her, lilac flirtation flickered like fireflies through the fading blue. "I can be whatever sort of teacher you'd like."

Michi's cheeks burned as if they harbored coals. She pointed a wavering finger straight at him. "None of that. That's just unfair."

He pressed his fingertips over his heart, brows rising as if to ask, 'Who, me?'

Exasperated, she flung up her hands. "You're wicked."

"Well, I am a fox."

"So that means you have to toy with me?"

The corner of his lips curled, just the barest degree, but where she truly spotted his smile was in the crinkles that creased around his eyes, warm and filled with affection, highlighted by streaks of amethyst across his Loom. "Perhaps just a tad." He strode for the couch and settled at one end, then dipped his chin toward the other cushion in silent askance for her to join him. "You're nervous. I was hoping to distract you."

Well, he'd distracted her, absolutely. But he sure as heck hadn't made her less nervous.

Flapping a half-hearted hand toward the kitchen, she asked, "Do you want a drink? A snack?"

He shook his head. "No need."

Which meant she had no reason to avoid joining him—no opportunity to calm the skipping jumps of her heart. Twisting her fingers into knots, she plunked onto the open seat, then tucked her feet beneath her butt. "Okay, so how do I start?"

He scanned her apartment, gaze paused on each ward plastered across her walls. This was his first visit back here since everything changed between them, and he'd yet to see her wards in all their glory. But for this to work, for her to have any chance of controlling her territory enough to stand a chance at expanding it, they needed to be in a place where other Looms wouldn't interfere, and here, inside her apartment, surrounded by psychic wards, was the only place that seemed remotely possible within Mushiyori—even if it did mean exposing to him just how pathetic her tolerance usually was, just how thoroughly she relied on seals to protect her.

"Establishing a baseline is probably best," he said after a moment. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but since we're within your wards, my Loom is the only one you can see, right?"

She bobbed her head.

"Good. And what do you see in my threads presently?"

"Why?" The question slipped out before she could help it. Really, she shouldn't be questioning him at all. He was doing her a favor being here. He didn't owe her this. But she couldn't help asking. Absurd though the logic was, the prospect of describing his Loom to him made her decidedly uncomfortable. It always did, any time she let on how much she could knew of someone else's psyche at any given moment.

"Like I said, a baseline will help us. I'm not sure how—if at all—your perception will change if you manage to extend your territory. Understanding what you're seeing _before_ succeeding might prove key."

She crinkled her nose, but unable to find a flaw in his logic, she shoved hair back behind her ears and nodded resolutely. "I'm seeing navy determination, emerald curiosity, moss anticipation, the barest touch of goldenrod nerves, and—" she'd ticked off each emotion on her fingers and now unfurled her pinky, staring at it rather than him "—lavender affection as well. Or, at least, those are the colors your threads are approximating. Your versions are all much fainter than usual."

"Right, of course."

She laced her hands in her lap, hoping to hide their trembling. "Now what?" And then, because that seemed so utterly helpless, she tacked on, "I mean, when you use your powers, how do you do it?"

He hesitated, gaze sliding off to some far-off place. "That's a harder question to answer than it should be. I've possessed my particular skillset for so many years, long before I made a home in this body, that accessing my energy is as subconscious and second nature as breathing. Asking how I use them is a bit like asking how I expand my lungs. I'm capable of it, but the specifics of _how_ I do so are… hard to formulate into proper words."

Michi blinked at him. "That's shockingly unhelpful."

"It is, isn't it?" he asked rhetorically, wincing. "Of any of us, Kuwabara might be best suited to advise on how to utilize a new—or, in your case, not so new—power. His energy evolved rather dramatically on one of the last proper cases we worked as a team for Spirit World, and it took him some time to master his new abilities." Glancing at her sidelong, he smiled. "But Kuwabara's not here now, and there's no harm in attempting without him."

She worried at the inside of her cheek, tearing at her skin, using her finger to press her lip more firmly against her teeth. His brow ticked upward, and he reached out, smoothing a thumb along her jaw and stilling her fidgeting. His attention lingered on her lips until she ducked her head.

A long, steadying inhale later, he said, "To start, do you feel your territory within your body in any respect? Is it a presence in your head? A weight in your gut? Anything at all?"

Maybe it had been once upon a time.

But now, six years down the road, she had no idea how to name where she ended and it began. "Afraid not. Your breathing analogy is probably apt."

"Your headaches, though. They're not physical in any real sense. They're your territory growing over-exerted. Can you hone in on that sensation?"

Frowning, trying to recall the exact feeling of one of her migraines, she dragged a nail along the grain of her tights. No matter what she did, her fingers refused to cease their fiddling.

"Michi," he murmured.

The concern in his voice froze her at last. "Yeah?"

"Why are you so nervous?"

A hundred reasons. A thousand. A million.

Because if she did this, didn't that mean her territory would be worse? Didn't it mean the Loom would be even more inescapable? Wasn't pushing her awareness outward the exact opposite of what she'd always wanted?

"I'm being stupid," she admitted at last.

"I doubt that."

"No, I truly am." Heaving a sigh, she straightened, folded her legs downward into a criss-cross, and shifted to face him properly. "No excuses. I'm doing this."

Showing an understanding of her that stole her breath away, he asked only: "For your transplants?"

She nodded shakily.

Some thought she couldn't name clouded his eyes, and for nearly a minute, he said nothing, merely watching her—studying her. Then he returned her nod with one of his own and said, "Let's start small. Simple. Genkai's taught you meditation, right?"

"Yes." Though she'd always been junk at it.

"Good. Let's try some of that, but focus your center on your eyes. Breathe through them. Try to sense the flow of energy as it tracks through your body and up to your vision. Think you can try that?"

She could _try_ it, sure. Whether she'd succeed was a different beast.

But she couldn't bring herself to admit as much.

"Sure thing," she said instead.

"Then let's begin."

* * *

Nothing Kurama tried got her anywhere.

Meditation only managed to make her sleepy, drawing all the exhaustion that had been growing in her bones straight to the surface. Once her eyes drifted closed for the fifth time, he abandoned that technique and shifted to directing her focus onto a singular thread within his Loom, urging her to pull it to the surface, instructing her to push her awareness out to meet it.

She picked a thread that spooled around his shoulder. When she first chose it, its length was steady blue, a faded shade that spoke to Kurama's calm determination, but after forty-five minutes of failed attempts to close the gap between it and herself, its shade shifted to apprehensive moss. At some point thereafter, a headache kicked up in Michi's temples, throbbing in time to her pulse, and eventually she gave up, slumping sideways into the couch cushions, jamming her eyes shut to block out the poorly veiled disappointment in his face.

She pinched her fingers over the bridge of her nose.

Kurama sighed.

"Sorry—"

"Apologies—"

They'd spoken in unison, then cut themselves off simultaneously.

In the ensuing quiet, Michi cracked her eyes open and peered at him through the gaps between her knuckles. "What in the world are you apologizing for?"

"That I'm not better able to help." He tilted his head. "You?"

"Mostly that I'm so thoroughly incapable of doing anything valuable—"

"Michi, don't be ridiculous."

"—with my territory," she finished, carrying on as if she hadn't heard him. "It's pathetic how useless I am. Six years with these powers and I still can't use them in the slightest."

"We both know that's not true."

She rolled her eyes, though she suspected the gesture was lost on him through the veil of her fingers. "You can grow plants with a barest touch. All I do is look at some stupid colors in the air. Let's not pretend those skills are equal."

"They don't need to be equal." He laced his fingers atop his crossed legs. "Michi, what you've been able to accomplish with your transplants is far more than I could ever dream of doing myself. How much have you spoken with Yana about the extractions he runs? They don't proceed nearly as smooth as yours. We've needed to involve ourselves to prevent physical altercations at least a dozen times with his transplants. None of us have been needed to intervene so much as once for any of yours. And, to be clear, I'm not saying Yana is failing us. He's succeeding far more than anyone else might manage. But you're uniquely suited for this task, and it's thanks to your territory. Regardless of if you learn to expand its ring of influence, you're already invaluable to us. So yes, our skills aren't equal, but at the moment, yours are the better set."

Michi couldn't meet his eyes, couldn't look at the powder blue in his threads that seemed to suggest pride—in her. "Are you punch drunk?" she all but whispered, straining for levity. "Has Yusuke stolen your smart juice?"

"Don't deflect."

Her breath hitched. "Kurama…"

"I mean every word. Wouldn't say them if I didn't. Grant yourself some grace. Learning to change your territory after so many years won't come overnight." Clearing his throat, he stood, and her gaze snapped up as he smoothed out creases in his slacks. "I'm afraid I should head home. I need to wrap up a project for work."

Ah, yes. The day job he somehow kept afloat despite endless hours dedicated to the halfway house's crisis. How he kept his step-father from questioning his absences, she'd never understand.

"Maybe," she said before he could head for the door, "I should try practicing with someone else." As his threads shifted to emerald curiosity and a tinge of wounded, magenta disappointment, she added, "Your Loom is so faded. Maybe it's making it even harder for me to lock onto. A more vibrant Loom might be easier."

The magenta didn't leave his Loom, but he nodded nonetheless. "A fair hypothesis. Perhaps Yusuke or Kuwabara?"

She shrugged. "I'll try it on anyone willing to be my test dummy, I guess. No time to be picky really. Not when the Unweaver seems so much more active."

"True."

Rising to her feet, she padded toward the entry way, and he followed. "Next time you drop off a transplant, could you have Genkai make a set of wards for me?" she asked. "I won't inconvenience everyone into coming here. Better to have some on hand." His gaze flitted to the ward plastered to the back of her door, and she laughed. "Other than these. I try not to move them. They're the only thing that keeps this place livable."

"Consider it done," he said, bending to lace up his shoes. As he pulled on his coat and reached for the doorknob, he paused, glancing back over his shoulder at her. Amethyst played across his cheeks in fragile, ephemeral threads. "Not to harp, Michi, but while expanding your territory for the sake of the transplants is noble, there's nothing wrong with learning for _your_ sake, too. It doesn't mean you have to stay a part of the halfway house once this is over. It doesn't mean you're choosing your territory over your human life." He turned the knob, tugged open the door, and stepped into the hall. "It's okay to want to master your powers _and_ to want normalcy. Trust me." His smile was small—and perhaps a touch sad. "Those desires don't have to be in conflict."

Then he was gone, striding off down the corridor before she could summon words. For what could've been seconds or minutes or hours, she stared after him, her heart pattering against her ribs. His voice ran on loop in her mind, and as she fumbled the door closed at last, the answer she wished she could've said at last rose on her tongue.

In his absence, she whispered it into her empty apartment.

"I hope you're right."

* * *

"I'm making it known now," Yusuke said as he sprawled across his couch, "you're welcome to test your weird voodoo on me, but if you screw up my threads, Keiko will probably kill you."

Michi curled up in the armchair kitty-cornered left of the couch. "Duly noted."

"Don't you want to know _how_ she'll kill you?"

"Not particularly—"

"Via slap." He grinned at her, lacing his hands behind his head, one elbow jabbing awkwardly into the cushions. "She's got arm strength like you wouldn't believe. I'm not sure how she does it. Maybe it's all in the wrist." He squirmed one hand out from under his head and flapped it back and forth, squinting quizzically at his rolling joint.

Michi tried to stifle a life.

Tried, but also failed.

"Yusuke," she said when her giggles subsided, "I think I need quiet. You know, to concentrate and everything."

He shot her thumbs up. "Message received. You good if I nap?"

Michi shrugged. "In theory, whether you're awake or not shouldn't matter." But in reality, who the heck knew what would make this work? Certainly not her.

Oblivious, Yusuke winked, threaded his hand back beneath his head, and screwed his eyes shut. In moments, he was asleep, breathing slow and steady, the faintest of snores echoing from his slack jaw. His threads stayed as they'd been while he was alert—a mix of teal happiness, gray exhaustion, and aquamarine contentment.

She tried to latch on to one of those teal strings, tried to pull it closer, tried to push herself nearer to it, tried to meet it in the middle. Tried and tried and tried. But nothing happened. She felt no shift in her territory, no change in her awareness.

Her wards—delivered to her by Kurama the night before, just one day after she'd requested them—were hung around the guys' living room, and she could see barely anything of their neighbors. That part of the plan had worked. But the rest? Her brilliant idea to use Yusuke and his electric, over-vibrant Loom? All of that fell to pieces.

Two hours later, when Kuwabara and Kurama arrived home with a clatter, waking Yusuke from a slumber in which his legs twitched like those of a dreaming dog, she was too frustrated to hang around for dinner and a gaming session, too fed up with her own limitations to make for even remotely good company. Excusing herself with a headache, she accepted the takeout Kuwabara and Kurama had picked up for her, allowed Kuwabara to scoop her into a bone-crushing hug, and then departed, heading home.

First to fume.

Then to plot.

* * *

Hiei's threads were thin and sharp as cheese wire, utterly wicked in their edges.

If there was any Loom in the world that might be easy to grab on to, it should be his. After all, it often felt as though his threads were already reaching for her, trying to tangle her up in their cutting grasp. Maybe she was junk at reaching beyond herself, but those threads were all but shredding the fabric of the universe with their mere touch—surely, they'd be just as eager to shred her, too.

Except, that appeared not to be the case.

Hiei sat in the corner of the guys' living room, and she'd joined him, right there on the floor, scattering psychic wards around them until she could no longer feel Yusuke and Kuwabara in the kitchen. She could hear the two of them, bickering incessantly, voices teasing, as they prepped dinner the night after her failed attempt with Yusuke, but she couldn't see their Looms, not even a trace of color.

On the other hand, Hiei's Loom was assaulting her.

It was as if by isolating him from the rest of the Loom of Life, she'd riled his threads until they grew bent on revenge and wove themselves into a lattice of acerbic, buttercup yellow boredom. And though Hiei hadn't so much as batted an eyelid when she'd asked if she could practice on him, he was watching her now, his crimson gaze impossible to decipher.

"What?" she asked once the weight of his stare grew unbearable.

"You're doing it wrong."

"Excuse me?"

"You're waiting for your power to come to you, but it never will. You need to seize it. You need to control it—rather than letting it control you."

She licked her chapped lips and shook her head. "I am trying to take control. You think I'm just sitting here hoping something happens? Of course not."

He snorted. "Claim whatever you want."

For a half-second, she contemplated what she might accomplish if she hit him. Never, in all her life, had she struck someone else, but right then, staring into the hard garnet of his eyes, wincing before the biting sting of his threads, nothing had ever felt so appealing as cuffing him square across the jaw.

But then he'd probably spit her upon that sword of his, and she'd bleed out on the guys' far too expensive hardwood, and it didn't seem worth it—no matter how fantastic his split-second of shock might have been. So instead, she ignored him, glaring at his threads, her fingers twitching in her lap as if to actually reach out and snag his Loom in her hands.

One minute stretched to ten. Ten to Twenty. Twenty to an hour. Until Yusuke whooped from the kitchen, announcing dinner was served, and she lurched to her feet, not even bothering to pick up her seals. Another failure.

So be it.

Kurama was at Genkai's, dropping off a transplant, so she'd eat with the other guys, play a few rounds of the shooter co-op with Yusuke—and, inevitably, tick him off by saving their butts more than once—then head home. Back to the drawing board. Back to more plotting.

The answer was out there. It had to be.

She just had to find it.

* * *

Michi tried with Asato next. Then Yana. Even a quickly aborted effort with Kaito. Three nights that week, they rejiggered their extraction schedule to give her more opportunity to practice, pushing off withdrawals for the sake of her labors.

None of it proved fruitful.

An evening at girls' apartment served her no better. After Yukina prepared a delicious dinner and Shizuru twined Michi's hair into a crown of braids, Michi set up camp in Keiko's bedroom, tacking up her psychic wards on every wall. She then settled on Keiko's futon and spent a solid hour attempting to push her territory outward until it enveloped Keiko at her desk, bent over an assignment for one of her classes, but Michi's endeavors got her nowhere and her awareness never changed. The same held true once Keiko finished her reading and swapped places with first Yukina, then Shizuru.

Over and over, no matter what she tried, she was met with the same impossible wall, the same debilitating inability to manipulate her territory. Most days, she relented beneath the onslaught of a headache that likely grew as much from tension as from her territory.

She was failing.

And she hated it.

* * *

Dumb, stupid chance kept her from connecting with Kuwabara sooner. That, and her own nerves. Of all the Detectives, he was the one she knew least. Which shouldn't have stopped her from asking for his help. He'd never been anything but kind to her. Sweet, even. Yet the further she spiraled into frustration with her own limitations, the more resistant she was to revealing just how pathetic her skillset truly was.

Eventually, though, Kuwabara was the only one left, and she wound up in the guys' living room a full week after her first try at territory expansion, seated across from him on the couch. He'd helped set up her seals, and now they were littered throughout the room, leaving her with nothing but his threads to focus on. Aquamarine ease. Emerald curiosity. The soothing dominance of teal happiness, matched by his relaxed grin.

"So you've tried everyone else, huh? No luck."

"None yet."

He drummed his fingers against his jaw, then dropped his hands to his legs pretzeled up between them and leaned forward. "Well, what've you been trying?"

She hesitated, aware of how haphazard her attempts had been. "Nothing that's actually worked. Kurama had me try meditation, but that got us nowhere. Since then, I've just been trying to hone in on a single thread and push my territory out to it."

"Gotcha."

Did he?

Because she didn't. Even though she'd been the one to speak, she had barely any idea what her words were supposed to mean. Connect with one thread? Drive her territory out from her body? How was any of that possible? Kurama had been wrong—

"What if that's not the right way to go about it?"

Her gaze snapped up to Kuwabara's. "What do you mean?"

He scratched absently behind his ear, squirming under her sudden attention. "I dunno what anyone has told you about me, but my spirit awareness is a lot higher than most people's. As a kid, it always freaked me out. I could sense—and, sometimes, even see—a lot of crap other people couldn't. My sis is the same. Guess it's a family trait or something. Point is, until I figured out how to control my spirit energy, I was overwhelmed, pretty much all the time." He pushed his hand upward, his fingers bunching into his hair. "Nowadays, I block most of that out, like you do with all that extra stuff we saw when Hiei first tapped into your head. So what if you need to do the opposite?"

Oh. _That_ was a possibility she hadn't entertained.

"You've walled off a lot of your territory, right?" He paused a moment, nose bunching up as he thought over his next words. "Maybe all those barriers are the problem. If you take them down, I know it makes your territory feel worse, but it could also free you up." He shrugged, silver spider-webbing across his Loom in streaks of sheepish uncertainty. "It's an idea, at least. Worth trying?"

Yeah.

It was.

As much as she squirmed in discomfort at the very idea, it _definitely_ was.

"You up for being my guinea pig?"

A surprised laughed tumbled from his lips, lime and cobalt brightening his threads. "That's why I'm here, isn't it?"

His levity was infectious, and a smile tugged at her lips. "So it is."

Tucking his long fingers into the creases of his knees, he leaned back. "Have at it then. Just, uh, don't unravel me, okay?"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Michi said with a bracing smile. "I doubt I'll manage much of anything, let alone 'unraveling' you, as you put it." She bit her lip. "And speaking of, I've been thinking: we should call it cleaving. What the Unweaver does, that is."

"Because that's how she changes their threads?"

"Yeah."

Kuwabara shivered, then shook out his shoulders like he was trying to rid himself of the chills. "Works for me, I guess. Makes sense to have a name for it. Though doesn't that also mean we think it's going to happen again? We wouldn't need a name if didn't."

"Having a name for a problem can give efforts to solve it purpose."

"Maybe," he said softly. Then, after a beat of uneasy pause, he straightened up and said, "This is kind of a topic change, but if we're owning up to things we've been thinking about, then I've got something to say, too." He summoned up a lopsided smile, his threads flooding with coral concern. "I'm won't pretend I know what it's like to have your territory all the time. I mean, even that brief window while Hiei projected it onto all of us was enough to prove how hard it is. But I _do_ understand how it is to feel—or see, in your case—things no one else does. It's… isolating. Right? People _think_ they get it, but they don't. They can't."

Michi swallowed roughly, struck wordless by his sudden empathy.

He spoke so plaintively, so clearly from experience. Even though he no longer struggled with his precognition and despite his claims that he couldn't imagine what possessing her territory felt like, it was readily apparent that on some level, he understood her. She saw it in his Loom, in the tapestry of soothing blues gathered about his broad frame. A flicker of silver embarrassment still hung beneath the aqua, but it had grown fainter, rapidly giving way to navy resolve.

His confidence woke a spark of her own.

As the lull stretched on, she found her voice. "Thank you."

He cocked his head. "For what?"

"For getting it." Drawing in a deep breath, she lifted her chin, scooped her hair up into messy bun, and readied to lower her defenses. "And for giving me a new technique to try. It may not work, but at least it's something."

"I have my moments," he said, grinning and tapping a finger against his temple. "Now, get started. Lower your walls. If it gets to be too much, you can always put them back up."

True. Brick by brick, if she had to.

But—with any luck—it wouldn't come to that.

* * *

AN: It occurred to me so early on that Michi and Kuwabara needed to bond over the experience of their powers, but goodness, it took a long time to find a place for that scene in the story. At long last, it's here! (For what it's worth, if I developed psychic powers, Kuwabara would definitely be the member of the gang I'd want to train me. Now I'm very curious, what about you guys?)

Endless thanks to those of you who reviewed last chapter. This story is rapidly closing in on 400 reviews, and that's BANANAS. Thank you all for reading and coming along for this story. It means the world to me. All the love to: knightsqueen05, MissIdeophobia, Gwen Flaming Katana, Pia, Laina Inverse, WistfulSin, GinaLiz, Aspendragon, ChocolateKisses9, o-dragon, roseeyes, Shell1331, ahyeon, inperfection, and InTheArmsofaTheif!


	32. Cold and Cobalt

Michi's first practice with Kuwabara accomplished nothing grand.

He sat composed and quiet as she stripped away her defenses, exposing the raw edges of her territory to the full brunt of the Loom of Life. His patience held even as the night wore on, but her own wore thin as she threaded her fingers ever-deeper through her hair, squeezing her eyes shut against a headache that swallowed her up all too quickly.

Swiftly, she recognized that Kuwabara's Loom wasn't like most she knew. Though his threads weren't electric like Yusuke's nor overly sharp like Hiei's, there was a sweeping connectedness that wove outward from him, sucking her in, a vortex whose riptide she couldn't pull free from.

Normally, with her walls raised and her second sight battened down, the difference between his Loom and those of others was imperceptible. But the further she carved away her own protections, the more the oddity clarified, snagging around her and drawing her inward.

The threads of the world—those cobweb-esque filaments born from air currents and light and mere existence—usually weren't truly visible at all, but around Kuwabara, they coalesced. Under typical circumstances, they were _felt_ more than seen, but where they touched his Loom, they twined together, forming thick cables of nearly colorless silk. If not for the way those opaque threads warped the color of Kuwabara's more traditional Loom, she might not have noticed them at all.

Yet there they were. Powerful links to the very fabric of the universe. Evidence, no doubt, of the heightened spiritual awareness Kuwabara possessed.

She remembered, too, the day Hiei had demonstrated her territory to the Detective team. Before she'd stripped out all the threads irrelevant to teaching them about Looms, she'd noticed the feedback loops between Kuwabara's emotions and those of his friends were stronger than most.

Another side effect of his awareness?

Probably.

Over the course of the following hours, she tried to lean into his greater vulnerability, tried to press her territory out to meet the whirlpool of his Loom—and though it didn't work perfectly, though she couldn't grasp his threads in any true sense, she still felt _it_.

A shift in her powers. A broadening of her territory's reach.

It was barely there. Still not enough for Kuwabara to even sense it. Which meant she hadn't pushed far enough, not yet.

But the change was undeniable. A clarity of focus. A brightening of the threads that wove closest to her person, those that crossed into the narrow space upon which she'd opened her territory.

And, of course, there was the headache.

It screamed louder and raged harder than any migraine she'd ever experienced, and when at last she called it quits and cobbled her walls back together, it wasn't because she was ready to stop. It was simply because she _had_ to.

Which Kuwabara understood. Instantly. The moment she sagged back into the cushions, he was on his feet, flying around the living room, flicking off the lights and drawing the curtains, then scrambling into the kitchen to get her a snack and drink. An hour later, when Kurama and Yusuke returned, Michi and Kuwabara still sat in the dark, swapping horror stories of the worst moments when their powers had overwhelmed them.

In Kuwabara, she unearthed a kinship she'd never had before. In him, she discovered another soul equipped—or was it afflicted?—with senses too complex for a human body to readily handle.

For the next few days, they convened in every spare moment. If they worked separate transplant extractions, she waited at the guys' apartment until he got home, gaming with Yusuke and Kurama or writing essays for her classes to pass the time. Then Kuwabara let her practice for however long she could manage—right up until her inevitable migraine brought her to the threshold of tears.

Her progress was slow but consistent.

Until finally, on the fourth day, he went rigid out of nowhere, eyes popping wide. Whooping with triumph, he showed her the raised hairs on his arms and announced that she'd spread her territory far enough for him to sense even still his threads remained unresponsive to her calls, impossible to wrest ahold of, but progress was progress. Or so Kuwabara declared.

If nothing else, it was a first step.

One of many yet to come.

And—even more remarkably—in the moments after Kuwabara calmed down, Michi realized that her headache had gone missing. Like smoke dissipated on a breeze, it faded into nothingness so quickly she hadn't noticed its departure; instead, she recognized its absence. The lack of pounding in her temples, the sudden ease of her breathing.

As if, impossibly, this was the way her territory was meant to be.

* * *

Michi and Kuwabara were together when he got the call.

They'd gone to her apartment for the first time all week, giving Yusuke free reign of the guys' home turf rather than relegating him to his own bedroom the way they usually did while Michi practiced. As had become their routine, Kuwabara had brought along some pending assignments, and he'd set up camp at her coffee table, sitting on the floor, his back against the couch. She'd curled up behind him, a blanket tugged all the way up to her chin, and spent the evening flooding her living room with her territory, trying in vain to wrap her powers around one of his threads.

When his phone rang, it shattered the stillness, his ringtone walloping her, cracking her tenuous concentration and sending a contracting ripple through her territory. At once, a stabbing knife punctured her temple, a headache of old rearing, and a pained whimper caught between her teeth.

"Sorry," Kuwabara gasped, pawing his phone out of his pocket. A drag of his thumb picked up the call, and the ringing cut out. Michi pressed the blanket over her eyes, listening without seeing as Kuwabara said, "Kurama? What's up?"

Only the faintest thrum of Kurama's voice made it to Michi, and she couldn't discern valid words in his answer, but she didn't miss the immediate change wrought across Kuwabara's Loom. Even with her eyes closed, her territory remained bright and insistent, recording the flurry of colors breaking across Kuwabara's previous canvas of aquamarine calm. The shades that rose now put ice in her veins.

Forest green fear. Mustard anxiety. The stain of mauve sadness.

Bad signs. All of them.

Kurama's humming speech faded, and Kuwabara cleared his throat roughly. "Got it. I'll tell her. But did you get everyone else out or…" He trailed off, unable to finish the question he'd begun.

Michi tried to breathe normally.

Her head pounded, but she couldn't bring herself to straighten out her territory, leaving it partially opened in hesitant uncertainty. She was too lost in Kuwabara's Loom, in the way his threads wove across the black canvas behind her eyelids, a roiling tapestry that woke comparable terror inside her chest. His Loom strained in a dozen directions, unfurling outward as if seeking connection, and to her surprise, his threads seemed to curl around her body, reaching for her own, invisible Loom.

Something in the extension of his threads bolstered her, forced the blanket down from her face, pulled her hands from her eyes. Because he needed her. The very essence of who he was _needed_ her.

And that meant it was okay that she needed him, too.

He murmured a hurried, fumbling goodbye, then twisted around to face the couch, his knees rising as he did so, bumping awkwardly—painfully—against the coffee table. No color lived in his cheeks. No warmth sparked in his dark eyes.

She didn't need him to explain.

She already knew.

"We lost a transplant," she whispered, statement more than fact.

Kuwabara blanched, his cheeks somehow paling further. "Yeah. Oharu. One of Yana's, obviously." He scrubbed his hands across his forehead, then down his cheeks, rubbing as if he could bring life back to his features—though she doubted he even knew how pallid he'd grown. "They couldn't find him right away. He wasn't home. Wasn't in any of the places Yana had down as his usual haunts." Just as he had on the phone, Kuwabara trailed off.

This time, she had to know what he didn't want to say.

"Where'd they locate him?"

"Hiei couldn't track him with his Jagan. Apparently, Oharu was just wiped off the map. But Kurama… well, he smelled him. Like he did at Ryota's. Or, I guess... it wasn't Oharu's scent he caught, but the corpses'."

He spat the words out in a rush, scrambling to get them off his tongue. In the silence that followed, Michi couldn't help but picture it—the sleepy town where Oharu had been placed, the wooded glades behind his home, the bodies dragged out into those trees to decompose.

It took a moment to realize she wasn't imagining Oharu. No, it wasn't some strange, unfamiliar demon known to her only from his halfway house file that rose in her mind; it was Ryota.

Dark, wraith-like Ryota. Reduced to a snarling monster by the Unweaver's talents. Speared upon the length of Hiei's blade.

Dying.

Then dead.

And now another. Oharu. Lost to the Unweaver.

How many more would they lose?

And the other question, just as big, just as terrifying: "How many people did he kill?"

A muscled ticked in Kuwabara's jaw. "Seven. Four more were…" He shook his head. "They called in Botan to try to heal the others. Kurama isn't sure if she'll be able to stabilize all of them. She isn't there yet, and he's just doing what he can to keep them alive until she arrives, but we may lose more."

At least seven people dead. Maybe as many as eleven.

Twelve, counting Oharu—and he deserved to be counted. She refused _not_ to count him.

He wasn't the murderer here, after all.

That title belonged to the Unweaver.

Breathless, she whispered, "Do you need to go?"

He blew a sigh out through his nose. "Probably. Kurama already called Yusuke. The two of us can join him and Hiei at Oharu's, do a sweep to make sure he didn't hurt anyone else, then maybe connect with Asato and head to Genkai's, make sure everything is okay there."

Though every muscle in her body screamed not to, Michi forced a nod. "Then go. Join them. I'm a mess anyway. A few hours in the quiet will do my mind good."

He hesitated a second longer, seemingly wavering between the tense, mustard anxiety in his threads that demanded action and his coral concern for her. "You sure?"

"Promise. Go. Call me when you're sure of the situation and figure out if you're going to the shrine."

"Of course." He lurched to his feet, then bent back down to wrap her in a hug. "We'll get through this," he said. "With every transplant we can. The Unweaver isn't going to win. I swear it on my honor as a man."

She mustered a wavering smile, but couldn't formulate anything more than a soft murmur of agreement, and soon he was gone, sweeping into the gathering night, off to fight a darkness far more absolute than the rise of the moon.

In his wake, she felt achingly alone.

* * *

Michi lay in the dark for hours, her blanket pleated around her sides, her eyes jammed shut against a headache that refused to dim.

Her territory remained halfway extended, bubbling out around the space Kuwabara had once sat. Logically, she knew she should either push it all the way out—to abate her headache, if nothing else—or draw it back in to her comfort zone, anchoring it in her eyes, tucking it where it might make her head smart but wouldn't saddle her with a migraine too vast for words. But possessing logic and actually acting upon it were two different ventures, and she couldn't bring herself to follow through.

 _Cleaved_.

She couldn't get that word out of her head.

Kuwabara had said putting a name to the Unweaver's nightmarish work seemed like prophesizing further attacks, and though it was thoroughly absurd, Michi couldn't help feeling that he'd been right.

Had she done this to Oharu?

Because that's what he was now—cleaved. Or what he had been, anyway. If the extraction team had been forced to kill him like Michi feared, then he wasn't anything anymore. Regardless, though Kuwabara hadn't been clear about Oharu's fate, Michi knew enough.

Whether he lived or died, he'd still been cleaved.

He wasn't himself anymore. Even if Hiei and Kurama had spared his life, she doubted he ever would be again.

If she were worth a damn with her territory, maybe his prospects would be different, but she _wasn_ _'t_ good with her territory. She'd wasted six years refusing to explore what her power might do. Utilized correctly, who knew what that time could've granted her. Had she learned to expand her territory years ago, where would she be now?

Could she weave a cleaved demon back together?

Or would such a skill always be beyond her?

Eventually, the quiet, stagnant darkness grew too inescapable, too much like a prison, and she stumbled upright. Wrinkles marred her dress and no amount of tugging could straighten its creases, so she retreated to her bedroom and shucked it in favor of an old sweatshirt, then swapped her tights for sturdier leggings. Two minutes later, she was in the hall, locking her door and turning for the stairs.

Her breath ran ragged as she burst onto the street. Night had fallen in full, cloaking Mushiyori in sweeping darkness, and only the streetlights dotting each corner disturbed the gloom. The arrival of March had lessened the winter's chill, and though the wind nipped at Michi's cheeks, she merely buried her hands in the pouch of her sweatshirt, then turned up the block.

Her destination was close.

She passed it almost daily. A plaza just five minutes down the road. The square where the first transplant attack transpired, where Dai lost himself and killed humans—and in doing so, signed his own death warrant, too.

In the months since he'd torn the intersection to ruins, the city had restored the worst of the damage. Just three days after the attack, the ruptured concrete had been repaved. A week after that, the square was reopened to pedestrians. By New Year's, the unobservant eye might never realize the plaza had been little more than rubble a month prior.

Most days, Michi chose to be one of those unobservant eyes.

But not today.

She needed to see it. What a cleaved transplant could do. The damage the Unweaver could foretell. The deaths she could weave into being with the plucking of her fingers.

Maybe Dai had never been fully cleaved. Maybe his Loom had not yet been shorn in half. Michi had never seen him, so she couldn't know with certainty, but whether he'd been entirely unraveled or only partially undone like Taki and Junko didn't truly matter.

The effect had been the same.

Humans had been killed. Dai had lost his home here.

The Unweaver had won.

It was time Michi bore witness to all of that, time she inked it across her soul so she could never forget it. Perhaps the urge was brought on by some twisted need to blame herself. Or maybe it was just a need to mourn, to stand in the place where this started and face the truth, to see it all for what it was.

Whatever the reason, what she had to do didn't change.

* * *

This late at night, the square was mostly deserted, only a few scattered pedestrians crisscrossing its walkways. Distractedly, Michi realized her territory was still expanded, but even as she drew up on a street corner and surveyed the plaza, she couldn't find the will to retract it. The task seemed insurmountable—and, in some respects, too unimportant—to waste her waning willpower on.

Her headache remained a drumming backbeat to her observations, half-tuned out. She was too numb to the world to even perceive the pain, the sorrow in her heart too all-encompassing to leave room for territory-wrought agony. Besides, there was too much to see in the plaza for her to worry about her head, too much to take in now that she wasn't willfully averting her eyes.

Even a migraine couldn't distract from that.

On the surface, this place was whole. Unbroken. But the longer she stood beneath a flickering streetlamp, staring out at all she could see, the more she spotted the breaks and fissures, the shattered pieces that might never come back together.

To her left, a ramen shop's broken window leaked golden light onto the sidewalk, the gaping glass boarded over with shoddy slats of wood. It had probably been something the owner intended to fix right away, but in the aftermath, such trivial damage had slipped through the cracks and gone forgotten.

Michi knew the proprietor who owned the restaurant, a tiny slip of woman, black hair gone steely with age. Her Loom was always lit with steady teal, her happiness unwavering and dogged, but Michi couldn't help wondering what lay in her threads now. Mauve sadness? Rusty, orange regret? Storm gray exhaustion to rival the hue of her hair?

Two doorways down from the ramen shop, tucked into the protective curve of a stoop, a tiny memorial had been set up. A pot of flowers long-forgotten had wilted down to dying stems and rotten petals, but two stuffed animals sat on either side of it, one old and weathered, looking for all the world like it had sat through the worst a Mushiyori winter could offer, the other new and unblemished, the bear's fur still tan, a crescent moon on its forehead visible.

Had a child died in Dai's attack?

Had more than one?

Across the street, painted across the rebuilt wall of a souvenir shop, sprawled a detailed mural. With so much distance dividing her from its swooping craftsmanship, Michi couldn't make out the characters scrawled across the plaster, but she could guess at their meaning.

Names.

A list of all those who'd perished at Dai's hand—at the Unweaver's hand.

How many plazas might be razed like this one before the Unweaver was captured? Just shy of a score's worth of transplants remained scattered through Japan. So few. And yet, so many. Would the halfway house succeed in bringing them all in? Or would they lose more apparitions to the Unweaver's ill intentions? And even if they did wrangle all the transplants back to Genkai's property, how long would they remain safe if the Unweaver evaded capture? Would the demons even be willing to stay? Or would they return home to Demon World?

So many questions. Too many questions.

And no answers—at least, none that Michi could find.

Gritting her teeth, she ducked her head into a gust of wind. Strands of her flattened curls lashed against her cheeks as a passerby drew within the field of her territory. The man's threads jumped to blinding brightness, and Michi's next breath hissed over her clenched teeth as her headache reasserted itself.

She needed to pull in her awareness, needed to—

"You're like me."

Michi nearly jumped out of her skin at the voice. It was at once rasping and melodic, like the formerly soothing tone of a singer gone rough after hours spent sobbing. In an instant, the pounding of Michi's migraine fell completely off her register, burned away beneath a spike of adrenaline that sent her heart careening against her ribs. Barely daring to breathe, she glanced sideways, bringing the woman into focus.

The Unweaver.

Right here. Mere blocks from Michi's apartment. Back at the scene of the first true devastation she'd created.

And unlike the last time their paths had crossed, Michi was alone now, without even Kaito or Yana to back her up. True, the Unweaver had rendered the boys powerless in moments, but their presence had still bolstered Michi's resolve. If nothing else, she'd clung to composure to protect them.

Now, that motivation was lacking.

She hadn't sensed the woman's approach, too distracted by the stinging clarity with which she'd seen the passing man's Loom, and now it was too late. The Unweaver had found her.

Her fingers scrabbled deeper into her sweatshirt's pocket, curling around her cell phone. There was no proper chance for a panicked alert to Asato or Kurama, but even just the smooth corners of her phone case were enough to calm the sudden jitters in her joints—though not enough to negate the oddity of the Unweaver's slippery, evasive Loom.

Michi's retort came out bolder than she would've guessed possible. "I'm nothing like you."

"Liar."

Beneath the golden light of the streetlamp overhead, the Unweaver looked… normal. An everyday, unremarkable woman. No tangled jumble of knitting dangled from her hands this time. Instead, her arms hung limp at her side, her bare fingers exposed to the night's chill.

Up this close, Michi could see chapped flakes on the woman's lips, spots where she'd gnawed down to tender flesh. Bloodshot streaks marred the whites of her eyes—from lack of sleep or crying or just poor genetic luck, Michi couldn't say—and her hair remained dyed in that strange fashion, roots gone silver, ends a faded brown. Yet despite her general dishevelment, she hardly looked the part of a cruel, wicked monster. If Michi had passed the Unweaver on the street, she'd have thought her the mother of a Mushiyori University classmate or perhaps someone's aunt, the sort of woman frazzled by rambunctious children—not the inhuman monstrosity responsible for destroying so many lives.

But appearances didn't change the truth.

Whether she looked it or not, the Unweaver was a killer.

"You see the Loom," the woman said, loud and clear, heedless of nearby pedestrians who might overhear her. Though maybe that didn't matter anyway. Like Yusuke had said weeks ago, no uninitiated human would be able to make any sense of references to Looms and colors and threads. Even shouting her secrets from the rooftops might not alert anyone to the murderer in their midst. Head titled, eyes cold and flat, the Unweaver continued, "You see it just as I do. That's why I can't weave you as easily as the others."

A chill wracked down Michi's spine.

 _Weave you._

Something about that word coming from the Unweaver's mouth made Michi's skin crawl—not because it was strange for Asato's term for her territory to be co-opted by this stranger, but because of the sinister edge in the Unweaver's tone, the creeping, insidious hint of what she could do with a twist of her fingers.

"You killed people." The putter of a passing car almost swallowed up Michi's whisper. Biting her inner cheek, she forced steel into her next words, refusing to let them go ignored. "You've pinned it on Oharu, but those people died because of you, not him. And now you've killed Oharu, too. Spirit World will charge him with murder, and he'll die for what you did to him."

The woman faced forward, staring across the square at the mural of names painted across the wall—the names of her first victims. "The only murderers here are the beasts you unleashed. If they've caused harm, it lies at your feet for freeing them among us."

Despite the ice in her veins, Michi channeled her best Hiei impression and refused to let her steely mask crack. The Unweaver was cold and unfeeling; Michi would have to be the same. "Until you, no transplant had ever hurt a human. Not a single one acted out of line. You did this. You—"

Claw-like fingers, bony and dry, seized Michi's arm, yanking her hand from her sweater's pouch. "Liar," the Unweaver declared again.

Michi's skin crawled, aching to rip free of the woman's grip, and with a desperate jerk, she tried to pull away. She had to get out of here, far from this woman who seemed so incredibly unstable, who so clearly wanted to shred Michi's Loom just as she had been shearing apart demons for months.

But no sooner had she tugged than did she stop tugging.

Because she didn't want to go. She didn't _want_ to step back. Because she was supposed to be here. She wanted to be here, in this spot, talking to the Unweaver, listening. She wanted to be like her, to understood the Loom the way she did—

 _No._

No, that wasn't true.

A creeping horror writhed down Michi's spine like a snake of icy cold.

The Unweaver was weaving _her_.

"Let me go," she demanded. Her fingers scrabbled at the Unweaver's brittle fingers clamped around her wrist, but bony though the woman's joints were, their grip was too strong for Michi to overcome—and she didn't want to, anyway, so why was she fighting? She should stay here. She should just listen. Like she was supposed to.

Like she wanted to.

"Make those monsters leave, girl," the Unweaver said again. "If you do, I'll teach you. I'll show you how to control the Loom—how to _weave_. It's what you want. It's what you _should_ want."

But no, the Unweaver was wrong.

Michi didn't want that. She'd _never_ want that.

"Wrong bargaining chip," she declared through gritted teeth, shaking her to clear out the cobwebs of the Unweaver's interference. "I can't make that happen, and even if I could, I wouldn't. Our transplants are home here. In Human World."

"They're killers."

New light glinted in the Unweaver's eyes and the world spun anew, Michi's thoughts muddling, a mire of instinct screaming for her to run fighting an overwhelming desire to go nowhere at all. After all, if she stayed here, maybe the Unweaver could terminate her territory like she had those other psychics months ago. Maybe she could grant Michi... freedom.

Peace.

And _that_ , Michi did want. In a deep, hidden, broken part of herself, she still hoped for the day her territory might cease to exist.

She couldn't deny that desire—no matter how much she wished to.

Yet even still, she knew better. Knew this was wrong.

"Our apparitions would never jeopardize the trust we've put in them," she said raggedly. Desperate, she lifted her wrist, drawing the Unweaver's brittle fingers into the light, staring at them unsurely, unable to convince her other hand to pry them away. "Whatever crimes they'd committed have happened because of what you've done to their emotions."

Lips pressing into a colorless line, the Unweaver dug her yellowed nails into the tender underside of Michi's wrist. "Are you so thoroughly naïve as to believe that?"

The woman's fingertips cut deeper, carving crescents into Michi's skin, and a gasp suffocated whatever answer Michi might've summoned. The Unweaver's nailbeds were picked bloody, scabs darkening her cuticles, and at last, clinging to that grounding, human detail, Michi struggled again to jerk free.

Free.

She _needed_ to be free.

Right?

"I know what those fiends can do," the Unweaver crowed. She yanked on Michi's arm, wrenching her body around. Spittle flecked across the woman's cracked lips. "I know the lives they can end. Don't claim a grave I dug with my own hands doesn't exist."

Wincing, panic closing her throat, Michi tried to step backward. _Escape_. She had to escape this woman and her mysteries and her lies. If Asato or Kurama or another Detective were here, they'd try to bring the Unweaver in, but Michi wasn't capable of that. And she didn't want to be.

She just wanted to stay here. She wanted—

 _No_.

"Let me go," she begged again.

The clamp of the Unweaver's fingers remained unmoving. "By what trickery do you hide your Loom," she asked instead, head tilting as she swept her gaze over Michi's body. "Why are your threads so thin? Why are you so hard to reach?"

Michi was barely listening. She dug at the woman's knuckles, trying to leverage her bony fingers backward. They proved unyielding, and panic grew like a wildfire in Michi's chest, her pulse pounding in her temples, blood rushing in her ears, the world roaring and spinning and flooding with terror.

With a sharp jab of her nails, the Unweaver stilled Michi's efforts. "Tell me, girl."

Tell her what?

Faltering, struggling to tame her jumbled thoughts, Michi shifted the hand still hidden inside her sweatshirt's pocket, dropping her phone in favor of her keys. Praying the woman wouldn't notice her movements, Michi slid a key between the knuckles of two fingers, its wide base held flat against her palm to keep it steady. A bit of blunt metal was a poor defense, but it was the best she had.

If she had to, she'd use it.

Right?

Because she had to get away.

Didn't she?

She thought so. Her instincts screamed so. But her muscles wouldn't listen, and she wasn't sure her body was wrong. Maybe she should stay here. There were so many questions. Shouldn't she try to get answers? The Unweaver posed endless riddles with her talk of graves and too thin threads. Michi should ask about those things, right?

She wanted to, didn't she?

"What do you mean by thin?"

The Unweaver's eyes sparked, her chapped lips twisting up at the corner.

That description—the use of 'thin'—was strange. It didn't match Michi's own experience. The Unweaver's threads were no thicker or thinner than any other Loom Michi had ever seen. They were slippery and ephemeral and impossible to bring into focus—but they weren't _thin_.

In fact, thickness wasn't even a quality of threads Michi had ever paid attention to before. Pigmentation, brightness, clarity—those were all traits she couldn't help but file away each time she glimpsed a Loom, but even in the case of Hiei and his wire-sharp emotions, she'd never noticed if his threads were thinner than normal.

Because that wasn't a trait that mattered. Color mattered. Tint mattered. Sharpness mattered.

Width didn't.

And yet, here the Unweaver was, demanding to know why Michi's threads were thin.

Lips pressing flat, the Unweaver shifted her grip, her nails scraping downward as her fingers slid toward Michi's elbow, yanking her closer still. "Make the beasts leave, girl. Then I'll tell you." A flush of pink stained across the woman's Loom, so all-encompassing that even the slick, evasive nature of her threads couldn't hide the color from Michi.

Regret. Sadness. Deep and inescapable.

Like a hurt that could never heal.

For just a moment, just one precious, fraction of a second, the fear in Michi's chest abated. Pain like that… What could cause such aching sadness?

"That's not my call," Michi said again. The grief in the Unweaver's Loom had swept her up, tearing past the miasma of her thoughts, and she had to say something, _anything,_ to ease the woman's anguish—even if all the words she possessed couldn't possibly be enough. "I don't run the halfway house. I don't make those decisions. But if you stop hurting them, if you stop cleaving our demons, no one has to die. Please. Trust us. Trust _me_ —"

The Unweaver's fingers tightened, and when she spoke again, goosebumps rose across the back of Michi's neck. "What have they done to you? How have they deluded you?" She bared her teeth, revealing plaque and film on their tarnished surfaces. "What tricks have those monsters used to make you think they're like us?"

"Stop," Michi pleaded, desperately trying to yank her arm away. "Let me go—"

The woman plowed ahead, undaunted. "Don't you see how they lie? How they pretend they're human when they're truly fiends? You must. You must see it." Her hand went white-knuckled around Michi's arm, her fingertips digging in with bruising force. "They _are_ murderers. Sin fashioned from flesh."

In a burst of movement, the woman's other hand jerked at the hem of her ragged shirt, yanking a thread from the cloth, snapping it between her nails. The motion drew Michi's gaze downward, and in the glow of the lamp overhead, she spotted a dozen strings littering the sidewalk. The Unweaver's hem came further undone as she tugged yet again, ripping another stitch and casting it to the pavement.

A yawning chasm opened in Michi's gut.

Staring at those scattered strings, clarity smashed through her confused, halting her rogue desires. The gooseflesh broken across her skin hadn't woken because of the woman's deranged murmurs. No. Her instincts had reacted to what she couldn't perceive herself—to the Unweaver manipulating Michi's Loom, to making her want and need and stay.

"Unless you're like them," the Unweaver spat, her monotone inflection at last cracking. "Is that why? Do you defend them because you've become one of them?" Grief-stricken mauve twanged in her transient threads as she snarled, "You support them, don't you? You think those beasts—"

Body freed, her wants her own once more—at least for now—Michi made her move. Immediately. Before it was too late.

Throwing her weight onto the balls of her feet, she pulled her keyring free of her pocket and thrust the bit of metal exposed between her knuckles toward the Unweaver's chest. The woman was quick—quicker than Michi ever would have expected—and she twisted sideways fast enough that Michi missed a direct blow. Nonetheless, her key's teeth tore along the Unweaver's collarbone, and as the woman shrieked in pain, her grip on Michi's arm at last loosened.

Breathless, Michi ripped free—and bolted.

* * *

AN: I hope this chapter was too confusing and that its impact hits the way I want it to. Capturing the effects of the Unweaver's meddling wasn't easy, and I know there's a weird back and forth to Michi's thoughts. That's intentional, because it's exactly what she's feeling, but I'm not sure how it will translate to a reading experience. I hope it won't be too jarring!

So, what's up with the Unweaver's weird perception of the Loom? And her talk of graves? Why does she hate demons so much? All these answers and more in chapters to come. We are in official endgame territory (though I think there's roughly ten chapters left), so it's all resolution and answers from here on out!

FYI for anyone who hasn't heard yet, FFnet is being a jerk and reviews aren't showing up properly on the review page, but from what I understand, they are still going through, so hopefully once the site gets its act together, they'll all populate. In the meantime, rest assured that I haven't deleted your comments or anything of that nature. This site is just janky as all get out sometimes!

Also, on a random note of levity, I added a nod to my favorite Pokemon to this chapter, just because I could. Excuse my self-indulgence, would you? (And if you spotted my fave, shout out to you, you fabulous soul.)

Dudes. DUDES. You are the most amazing peeps of all time. Last week, I mentioned this fic was nearing 400 years, but we were still 20 away, and I didn't expect to hit _400_. Yet we did, and I am over the moon. Thank you, thank you, thank you, you amazing, wonderful, FANTABULOUS souls: knightsqueen05, GinaLiz, Laina Inverse, Shell1331, roseeyes, o-dragon, MissIdeophobia, Guest, Beccalittlebear (extra big shout out to you, friend, for all your reviews this week!), ahyeon, WistfulSin, SilverThornz, and yusugay!


	33. Flaxen and Frayed

Michi's legs carried her down one block, then another, churning unrelentingly as she whipped out of the plaza and raced for the well-lit route along the subway line. On the way, she yanked her territory closed, banishing it back to her eyes, where it wasn't harmless but at least it wasn't harmful. Somewhere at her back, the Unweaver was still screaming, her hair-raising shrieks chasing at Michi's heels.

The wind and cold stung at her eyes, but Michi blinked back tears and pushed her legs faster. She had to run. To get away.

Away, away, away.

Not toward her own apartment. Not after the Unweaver had come so close to it. She might never know whether the woman had tracked her down or whether sheer bad luck brought them together, but either way, staying so close wasn't fathomable.

She had another safe haven, though. Two stops down the subway line. An apartment that had become as familiar to her over the last month as her own, even if its occupants weren't home right now.

It was only as she reached the stoop, her lungs burnings, wind-summoned tears streaking her cheeks, that she realized she didn't have a key. For a moment, she dawdled there, one foot on the stoop, the other still plastered to the sidewalk, panicked adrenaline churning her mind into a maze she couldn't escape—but then the door swung open, a man emerging from the golden light within, head ducked as he stepped into the night, and she whipped past him in a heartbeat, stumbling into the foyer beyond.

Two minutes later, the elevator deposited her on Kurama's floor, dinging cheerily as its doors slip open. Heart in her throat, clogging it so tight air could barely reach her lungs, she staggered to Kurama's threshold. She didn't knock. No one was here; they were all far from Mushiyori, cleaning up the mess of Oharu's cleaving.

Instead, she slumped to the floor, sagging against the door's ornate paneling, pressing her forehead against the wood. Fumbling, she dug her phone from her sweatshirt and put through a call. It rang. Once. Twice.

Then connected.

"Michi?"

Her hands shook so badly she nearly dropped her cell. "Kurama," she breathed, and for a moment, she could manage no more than his name. Then, her tongue awkward and uncooperative, she forced out an explanation. "She found me."

Three short words, and yet, they were all that was necessary.

Kurama inhaled sharply and in the second of silence that followed, she could picture him in her mind's eye as clearly as if he stood before her—the way his brow would have creased, just for a fraction of a heartbeat, before he smoothed his fear away and leaned into the sharp intelligence he kept so carefully tucked beneath the surface. Then his lips would thin, his eyes would harden, turning as crystalline as true emeralds. It was the look he took on when he ran logistics, his thoughts leaping ahead at a pace few people could keep up with.

Knowing all that, it was no surprise when he skipped what might have seemed like obvious questions in favor of those that couldn't be filled in later. "Where are you? Somewhere safe?"

"Your building."

His sigh of relief crackled in her ear—or maybe that was wind. Had he started running?

"Okay," he said, unruffled, voice placating and steady. "I'll be there soon. We were going to Genkai's, but I'm—" A yell interrupted him, and then he correct, "Make that, _we_ are coming to you instead. For now, Yusuke hid a key in the potted plant left of the elevator. Take it and head inside."

Struggling upright, she spotted the fern in question. Kurama kept talking, his soothing voice urging her to dig up the key, get inside, and the lock the door behind her. She let him guide her, pretending he was actually there, keeping her on her feet.

Then she was out of the hall, the deadbolt clinking home under her trembling hand, and a moment after that, she'd curled up on the couch. All the while, Kurama stayed on the line. As he spoke, she moved on auto-pilot, seizing a console controller from the coffee table and waking the television with a button on the remote.

He probably heard it when the intro music of the fighting game she enjoyed most began blaring, but he didn't falter, just maintained a steady stream of stories about the birthday party his mother had thrown for his step-brother the weekend prior. Michi hummed intermittently to prove she was still on the line, but her thumbs took on a life of their own, flicking past the game's start-up screen in moments, selecting her character, and turning the computer opponents to the highest difficulty. One jab of the start button was all it took to thrust her into the midst of battle, and after that, her fingers flew as she fought to stay ahead of the chaos, the game consuming what little capacity for thought she had remaining.

And then, quite suddenly, seconds—or maybe hours—later, Kurama's voice no longer issued from the phone in her hand, but from the entryway instead.

"Michi?"

"You okay?"

Two different voices. Kurama. Then Yusuke. And three sets of feet. Kuwabara, too, then. But no Hiei.

She didn't look away from the television to confirm. There was no time. No opportunity to glance up without losing a life in the game. But she moved, a half foot to the right, creating space at her side.

Rustling cloth and the clunking of discarded shoes proceeded Kurama accepting her cue, but soon he'd slid into place at her side, a controller held loose in one of his lithe hands. He sat on the sliver of cushion she'd cleared, so close that his washed-out threads pooled across her lap, a jumble of palest pinks and yellowed greens, his fear and concern unabated despite visual proof of her well-being.

Yusuke and Kuwabara were only a step behind. With an exaggerated groan, Yusuke flopped onto the far end of the couch. Kuwabara tossed him a controller before laying claim to their leather recliner. Its footrest unfolded with a _thwump_ , and Kuwabara kicked out his legs as he slumped into its crevices.

Kurama waited until she sent the last enemy careening off screen before asking, "You're not hurt?"

She shook her head.

"You're sure?"

"I wouldn't lie, Kurama."

"Of course not." He breathed deep, just once, then settled into his seat with forced ease—an oxymoron so perfectly _him_ it almost unwound the knot in her chest. His Loom bled toward calm blues, but whether that was as coerced as his posture she couldn't be sure.

His movement brought their legs together, thighs touching. Intimate, and yet not. There was nothing romantic in the gesture, nothing akin to flirting. It was just proof. Evidence, for him as much as her, that she was whole and mostly unharmed and still here.

Without saying anything more, she navigated back to the character selection screen, let the boys choose their fighters, then launched them into battle.

Single battles with all four of them were far more chaotic than fighting computers could ever be, and for a while, she lost herself in the ebb and flow of the fight. Kuwabara and Yusuke steered clear of her, fighting one another almost exclusively in a not-so-thinly veiled effort to coddle her, their motivation blatant even without with the coral concern dominating their Looms.

Kurama wasn't so heavy handed.

He didn't change his play style to protect her. Instead, he fought as he always did, bouncing from one target to the next, landing whatever opportunistic strike favored him most. Inevitably, Kuwabara and Yusuke wore each other down to nothing, and whoever survived was easily dispatched, leaving only Michi and Kurama to duke it out.

On a normal day, they'd have proven a nearly perfect match with nothing but the slightest edge in Michi's favor, but this was no usual day, and keeping pace with Kurama's skilled onslaught was a task too mighty for Michi to surmount. Over and over, in round after round, once Yusuke and Kuwabara had been wiped out, he made short work of her, too. It didn't matter what map they played or which character she chose. Today was not meant to be her day.

But eventually, as he trounced her in ever more creative ways, she began to talk—to recount in halting, uncertain terms her run-in with the Unweaver. Kurama knew better than to go easy on her. He knew that throwing her even a single game would be far more insulting than kicking her butt on endless repeat, and he knew, too, that asking questions would only clam her up.

So he didn't ask. He just listened.

To their credit, Yusuke and Kuwabara did the same.

In between throws that hurled her off the battle stage, Michi detailed the urge that had driven her down to the square, the need to see what the Unweaver had caused. As he pummeled her to the edge of oblivion with a hit-stun combo so perfect she'd never break free, she described the Unweaver's sudden appearance, her dishevelment, the sickening cut of her nails. While he juggled her character upward in an inescapable chain, she spoke of the grave the Unweaver referenced and her insistence that demons had killed someone dear to her. During a round in which he attacked with a barrage of items, she struggled to explain the odd way the Unweaver spoke of the Loom, how she described threads in a manner Michi would never think to.

And last of all, as Kurama racked up his tenth consecutive victory, she let her controller slip from her fingers and whispered about the strings the Unweaver had torn from her shirt—the strings with which she'd woven Michi.

Then, and only then, did the charade fall away.

Casting aside her controller, Michi pressed back into the couch and drew her thighs up to her chest, looping her arms around her knees. Had they been alone, she might've leaned into Kurama, might've pressed her face to the soft cashmere of his sweater and let the world cease to exist for as long as she could manage, but they _weren_ _'_ _t_ alone—and there'd be none of the strange intimacy that had risen between them in the last weeks.

Not right now.

"If you're up for it," he said softly, "I'd like to ask some clarifying questions. You've laid out at lot of pieces, and if I've cobbled even half of them together properly, I believe our next moves are pivotally important. We'll need to make them with care—and accurate understanding of our circumstances."

Yusuke muffled a snort, his threads gleaming electric cobalt. "Always so practical, huh, foxy?"

Kurama leaned forward, setting his controller on the coffee table with a clatter unfitting of his usual grace. "Must we?" he asked drily.

Yusuke's brows shot toward his hairline. "Must we what?"

"Crack jokes. Be sarcastic. Put on a whole show."

From the armchair, Kuwabara whistled, a quick, low little sound that brought Yusuke's gaze swinging his way before jumping back to Kurama. The blues in Yusuke's Loom shifted, spiraling into cautious yellows. "Can't say I was aware I'd started performing."

"You're _always_ performing," Kuwabara said, and when Yusuke shot him an answering glare, he merely lofted his shoulders in an apathetic shrug. "I mean, it's true. And it's not like it's a bad thing, most of the time. But, uh…" His eyes flitted to Michi before finding Kurama. "Maybe now isn't the best time."

The obvious implication was that he meant Michi was too fragile right now, that she couldn't handle Yusuke's blowhard showmanship, but that wasn't true—and from the way the Ties That Bind glinted in brilliant cables between Kuwabara and Kurama, she knew he was aware of that, too.

Despite herself, despite the wretched turn this night had taken, a laugh burbled past Michi's lips.

As one, the boys zeroed in on her.

"What's so funny, Kuroki?"

"Nothing, really." She sat up, not pulling away from Kurama so much as leaning back so she could glimpse his widened eyes and inquisitively arched brow. His threads glimmered in shades of sun-dappled green, curiosity playing across them in pale hues. "It's just…"

Well, what was it exactly?

For one, it was the dynamic between the boys, for one thing. The banter and kinship and the overwhelming sense that when they were together, they were simply themselves.

But it was also much more than that—it was _Kurama_.

Something about the way he'd skipped niceties, not bothering to confirm and re-confirm that she was okay, that she was holding it together. Not bothering to coddle her and coo and worry. In fact, it was the very reason that Yusuke had called him out—his practicality. His focus.

If she'd run to Asato instead, he would've popped off the same stilted jokes Yusuke seemed set on trying, caught up in a poor attempt to pass off his nerves as humor. All the while, anxiety would've been etched into his every gesture, his every word, his every thread. Without a doubt, they'd have circled back over and over to whether she was sure the Unweaver hadn't permanently afflicted her, to whether she sure she was actually okay.

And it wasn't that Kurama hadn't asked the same question. He had. Twice, even.

Nor was he free of tension.

Worry still mottled his Loom in sickly yellow, and a stiffness hung about him that she'd witnessed only rarely. It seemed to manifest when he anticipated a fight, some oncoming battle that necessitated an instantaneous readiness, but there was no enemy to be engaged here, and rather than channeling that strain back at her, he'd aimed it forward—toward a plan for next steps.

Because he was Kurama. Because he was nothing if not a thinker.

And that was it—the reason why she'd laughed, even though she hadn't understood it right away.

Weeks ago, she might've interpreted Kurama's calculating farsightedness as dismissal. As she had on that horrid day they'd gone to see Ryota, she might've seen a cutting, cold indifference in his reserved, tight question, as if she were far less important than the grand scheme of the Unweaver's machinations.

But now?

Now, she understood.

He withdrew to hide his own fears. By guiding focus onward to future plans, he granted himself the precious moments he needed to reclaim the composure he held so dear. His aloof intensity was nothing more than a cobbled together defense. A deflection.

A shield.

One she recognized—and, in that recognition, unearthed her own sense of calm.

As the silence stretched on, Yusuke huffed and made a great show of slumping into the cushions, jamming his eyes closed and letting off one great, showboating snore before Kuwabara chucked a pillow at him.

Unimpressed with Yusuke's theatrics, Kurama nudged his elbow against hers. "Michi?"

She glanced up and discovered that during her long stint of reflection, pastel yellow had spilled across his threads in broadening swathes of discomfort, his lips crooking downward at the left corner. Even his masks had their breaking points.

"Sorry. I'm just a little rattled." Not true. Not anymore, at least. But confessing her realization, her newfound understanding of him, was a moment best saved for a private conversation. Yusuke and Kuwabara wouldn't get it. In fact, knowing Yusuke, he'd probably unload a whole bout of snark she didn't want to deal with right now. Better, then, to deflect and circle back later, at a time shared only with Kurama. "But all that aside, I think you were about to ask some questions, right? Let's have at it, then."

Yusuke threw up his arms. "Jeez. You're just like him. All business. Just like that."

Michi ignored him and turned to face Kurama more directly. Without thinking, she tucked her toes beneath the edge of his thigh and leaned a shoulder into the couch, head tilting to rest against the pillow. "Question number one?"

Kurama's eyes were unreadable. Light from the television, still showing the character selection screen of their game, reflected off his pupils and morphed his normally jewel tone irises to muddy browns. But casually, so surreptitiously she doubted the other men even noticed, his hand slid around her ankle, long digits finding the sliver of exposed skin beneath her leggings' hem—another gentle affirmation that she was here and whole and uninjured. "First and foremost, to be perfectly clear, do you believe the Unweaver manipulated your Loom?"

Blunt. Pointed. No bushes beaten around.

Like ripping off a band-aid.

"Yes. When she first appeared, I tried to run, but stopped myself. I didn't want to leave. I hated it. I hated seeing what Dai had done, and I hated knowing that it was her fault, and I hated listening to her rant about demons, and I wanted to go home, to get away—but I also didn't. I _couldn_ _'t_. So I stayed."

"So she put the thought in your head to stay?"

Michi hesitated. She bit the inside of her cheek, brow creasing. "I wouldn't call it a 'thought,' really. More like, an urge? Or a desire? I… _wanted_ to be there."

"Comparable to what Kaito and Yana experienced under her influence." He spoke as much to himself as to her, his eyes going distant, staring toward the television but clearly not seeing it. Absently, like he didn't even realize he was doing it, he swept his thumb over her ankle bone, up and down in a steadying rhythm.

Despite his distraction, she nodded. "Yeah. Just like that."

"But you're free now? Your desires are your own?"

"I... think so." The catch in her voice brought his gaze snapping to her, and her chest expanded around a sigh too vast for words. "I don't know how to be sure, but I'm not—at this very moment—feeling the way I did in the square."

At her back, out of sight but not forgotten, Yusuke whined low in his throat, and judging from the thrum of movement through the couch, he must have shaken himself, like a dog trying to dry their coat. "Just the sound of that gives me the heebie-jeebies."

"Me, too," Kuwabara muttered.

Kurama nodded, the hand not wrapped around Michi's ankle rising to rub his jawline. "It's an unsettling prospect. Based on it, I'd hazard to guess the Unweaver's talents must lie in a different vein or perhaps—and pardon the dreadful pun—a distinct skein of the Loom of Life than yours, Michi."

"Meaning there's more to the Loom than just emotion."

"Right." Dusky blues swirled across Kurama's threads like smoke, his concentration banishing whatever else had concerned him previously, and his thumb stilled on her ankle, as if he'd paused to gather his thoughts and even that simple movement was too much diversion. "I'd imagined such a prospect might exist thanks to your territory. Though you're most sensitive to emotions, you can still view connections such as the Ties That Bind and you're even loosely aware of the gossamer-esque filaments of the world at large, so it's not a reach to imagine the Loom might reveal other facets of an individual, too."

Like desires.

"You think that's what she's be capable of? Other than just cleaving Looms entirely, I mean."

"It's my best guess."

"Shit, that's creepy," Yusuke said. He lurched to his feet, stomping for the kitchen. "I need a beer. You lot?"

"Heck yeah," Kuwabara announced emphatically. "Should've grabbed those to start."

Yusuke stopped right before disappearing around the corner into the kitchen and cocked his head. "Kurama? Meech?"

Kurama nodded, though Michi wasn't sure he'd actually heard Yusuke, but she shook her head. A buzz was the last thing she needed right now.

"Have it your way," Yusuke crowed, then bounded around the corner.

While he clattered around the kitchen, clearly scrounging up more than just a beer, a wrinkle creased across the bridge of Kurama's nose, and he exhaled gradually, meting out his breath in careful increments. "Where I'm hung up," he said, "is on how the Unweaver converted her sight into such direct manipulation of the Loom. Too many variables remain. And your efforts, Michi, though impressive, don't reveal many answers."

True.

There was something else, though, that it might explain. Sitting up straighter, Michi shifted to bring Kuwabara into view. "If she sees a different part of the Loom, maybe that's why she describes it so strangely. I wouldn't know how to begin discussing the Loom without focusing on colors, so if she's not seeing emotions and the colors they bring with them, maybe she sees something else in threads."

Kuwabara rubbed a hand through his curls, mussing them up, and when his hand fell away, stray locks stuck in all directions like broken springs. "Makes sense."

At some point, Michi's sweatshirt had ridden high on her hips, revealing the small of her back to the chilly air and the cold kiss of the couch's leather. Distracted, trying to work out exactly what this revelation about the Unweaver might mean, she snagged the blanket off the back of the couch and unfurled it. It settled over both her and Kurama, and beneath its velveteen surface, she extended her legs, her ankle slipping free of his grip, but she didn't move far, and a breath later, she'd found his hand with her own, lacing their fingers together one by one.

"If I tried," she whispered to both men or to herself or to no one at all, "do you think I could learn to see other parts of the Loom?"

Kuwabara inhaled raggedly, but he said nothing, the splash of yellows and greens in his threads suggesting he was waiting on some clue from Kurama. For his part, Kurama's answer came without inflection, without judgement, without even the faintest hint of what he'd thought of her question. "Would you want to?"

Once upon a time, her response would've been instantaneous. _No. Never. And while they were at it, how about seeing nothing of the Loom at all_? Goodness, even a few hours ago, under the Unweaver's prying influence, her answer would've been viciously opposed.

But this wasn't once upon a time. It was right now—and right now, the Unweaver was out there, maybe as close as a few blocks away, her frantic fingers still pulling the Loom apart at its seams. Would it be the worst thing in the world, then, to see what the Unweaver saw? To witness firsthand how the Loom appeared to her?

No. It wouldn't.

"Maybe it's the key," Michi said. "Maybe if I saw other layers of the Loom, I'd understand how to stop the Unweaver or, at least, be able to work out how she's corrupting our transplants."

"Perhaps." Beneath the blanket, Kurama drummed his free fingers against his thigh. His rhythm ran counterpoint to her skittish pulse, steady where she was frantic, grounding where she felt flighty. "Or perhaps you'd find yourself inundated with even more stimulation. Perhaps it would overwhelm you." The long, silken strands of his hair tickled her cheek as he shook his head. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. As is, your territory is both a gift and a burden. No need to stretch it further—unless that's what you truly want. Not for the transplants. Not because of the Unweaver. But because it's what _you_ —"

She squeezed his hand. Tight. Just for a second. "Shush. I get it."

A pulse of lime flashed fleetingly across his Loom. "Right, of course."

Yusuke reemerged from the kitchen, three beers in hand. "But Kurama's got a point. You need to master what you already know before you learn new tricks. That's the junk Genkai preaches, at least. Walk before you run and all that stupid advice."

Michi sighed, biting the inside of her cheek while Yusuke passed out the drinks. At her side, Kurama took a long draw from his, fingers bone white around the bottle's long, frosty neck.

"So," Kuwabara said once Yusuke had flopped onto the couch once more, beer cradled in his lap, "are we not going to talk about the part that has me super freaked out?"

"And what would that be?" Yusuke asked, rocking his head back to stare at the ceiling.

"The Unweaver found Michi. Right? That's what this means, isn't it? Because that square is like a stone's throw from her apartment. Are we supposed to believe it was purely coincidence that brought them both there tonight?"

Michi's tooth bit a little too sharply into the underside of her lip. The bolt of pink that rippled across Kurama's Loom proved he'd heard her ensuing involuntary gasp, and she ducked her head to avoid his probing gaze. For his part, Kurama had stiffened. Only a degree. If Michi hadn't been sitting so close that she felt his every breath, she might not have even noticed.

"I thought of that, too," she said after a tense beat. "It's why I came here, instead of going home. This seemed safer."

Yusuke swung upright, sucked down a gulp of beer, then set his bottle on the coffee table with a _clink_. "But isn't your place plastered with psychic wards? I thought we were operating under the assumption the Unweaver can't see Looms through seals like that."

Michi wished she didn't have to provide a counterpoint to Yusuke's confusion. After all, the idea that her home was still safe was a calming one—but she also knew better than to believe it. "The wards are good protection, but I don't think they're perfect. She found Taki at Genkai's, didn't she? Who's to say she couldn't find me, too?"

Around the neck of his beer, Kurama's fingers went as rigid as the bones they resembled. "Even if the wards are perfect and the Unweaver can't view Michi through the seals, she still could've pried Michi's address out of a transplant or discovered it in some public record. I imagine you weren't overly secretive with your charges, were you, Michi?"

She winced. "I didn't tell them every detail of my personal life. But I was open with them. I thought it would help. Especially the ones who were afraid of starting over here."

Kurama's threads glowed in a jumbled tangle of amethyst affection and yellow unease. "The ones that needed _you_."

No point denying it. "Yeah," she whispered.

"Then, yes, Kuwabara," Kurama said slowly, "we must assume Michi's apartment has been compromised. Tonight luck played in Michi's favor—in our favor. It might not always."

Propping his chin in his palm, Yusuke said, "In that case, Meech can take my room here. I can head to Keiko's or crash on the couch or—"

"I'm not stealing anyone's bed, Yusuke," Michi interrupted quickly. "I can go to Asato's. He and Yana won't mind."

"Yeah, but Kido and Yana aren't in Mushiyori right now," Kuwabara said. "They went out to Genkai's after Yusuke let them know about Oharu."

Oh, right.

As the realization that Asato wasn't a simple text away settled over her, exhaustion crept in on its wake, a smothering wave that damped her resistance and drew a sigh to her lips. She swallowed it down roughly. "I forgot about that. If I could stay here until they're home tomorrow—"

Yusuke silenced her with a snort and a roll of his eyes. "Take my dang bed, Michi. It's not a big deal."

"Or mine," Kurama said. His fingers flexed around hers, soft amethyst feathering out across his Loom.

At once, Yusuke grinned ear-to-ear, a wicked glint in his eyes. "Duh. Of course, you'd rather take fox-boy's bed. Shoulda thought of that myself." Leaning forward, jaw propped atop curled knuckles, he practically purred, "We talking single or double occupancy?"

"Urameshi," Kuwabara hissed, hurling a pillow. His aim was perfect, and the cushion caught Yusuke square in the face, knocking him off balance. With an undignified squawk, he lurched off the edge of the couch. Still, despite the direct hit, Kuwabara's efforts to defend her honor weren't entirely reflected in his Loom, awash as it was in bright cobalt amusement, nor in the smile he couldn't keep off his lips.

Extracting his hand from hers, Kurama slipped out from beneath the blanket and stepped over Yusuke's dramatically slumped body. "Provided you're sleeping in your own bed, does it matter who else sleeps where?"

Yusuke huffed and straightened with a flourish, sweeping a theatrical hand over his gelled hair to confirm its usual style had gone undisturbed. "You bastards have no sense of humor."

"Nah," Kuwabara said, traitorous laughter in his voice, "you've just got shit comedic timing."

While Yusuke spluttered, Michi found her feet. Her joints ached from so long spent curled into the tightest space she could manage on the couch, but she ignored the pains as she folded up the blanket and draped it over the cushions. Softly, directed only at Kurama, she murmured, "I don't want to steal your room from you. Truly."

From the floor, Yusuke cackled. "Then don't!"

Like a striking snake, Kurama's wrist flicked out, cuffing Yusuke deftly in the back of the head. It was so quick, so fluid and intentional and precise, that it left Michi blinking, half-sure she'd imagined it. Judging by the spikes of lime through Yusuke and Kuwabara's Looms, they were equally surprised, though Yusuke's shock quickly darkened to a wary pine.

He scrambled upright. "Alright, message received. I know when I've overstayed my welcome."

A second later, Kuwabara was on his heels, crowing with laughter as they beat a retreat down the hall to their bedrooms. "Dude," Kuwabara said, his voice carrying unintentionally into the living room, "you pissed Kurama off enough that he _hit_ you."

A weary sigh brought Michi's gaze swinging back to Kurama. Faintest silver flickered at the edges of his threads. "That was an overreaction," he admitted, the same hand that had struck Yusuke now rubbing at his jaw.

"Maybe." Probably, really. But she couldn't exactly blame him for his short fuse. This evening had been horrid from the moment Kuwabara's cell rang with the news about Oharu. Everything since had only worsened it to unfathomable depths. "I'm sorry," she said, "for how this night went."

His brows rose, his lips parting as if he planned to interrupt, but she shook her head and plowed ahead.

"I'm sure you all had your hands full with Oharu as it was, and for me to call you like I did… I'm sorry for whatever panic I caused. I wasn't thinking straight, and as soon as I escaped her, I just ran here, but it wasn't until I was at your door that I remembered you wouldn't even be home. Then—" She cut herself off, sucking down a ragged breath before finding words again. "I needed to hear your voice, but that wasn't fair to you."

Coral blanched across his Loom as he shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, eyes unreadable. Before he could even lift a hand, she closed the remaining distance between them and tucked her forehead against the curve of his shoulder, feeling the jumping of his pulse against her cheek. He breathed deeply, limbs rising around her.

"Don't apologize, Michi."

She wove her arms around his tapered waist, feeling the press of his muscles against her palms and letting his firmness ground her. This was Kurama—and, at last, she understood him.

"You didn't let me finish," she whispered into the soft cloth of his sweater.

"Oh?"

"I wish I hadn't had to call you, because I don't want you to be afraid for me. I don't want to scare you like I did after that first run-in with the Unweaver. _But_ —and this 'but' is very important—seeing you tonight, seeing the way you were… Frightened, but refusing to show it. Concerned, but knowing that I couldn't bear your nerves on top of my own. Sheltering me, but protecting yourself, too." She eased back until his face swam into view. His features set her heart racing against her ribs, but she drank them in slowly—carefully.

All of it mattered. All these pieces of this man she'd come to know. His silken, scarlet bangs brushing her forehead. His enigmatic eyes glittering like emeralds in the dancing light of the television. The lines around his lips that had become so very familiar to her. The twining filaments of faded color in his Loom, palest teal and emerald and lavender that spoke of swelling hope.

She breathed deep. Just once. Then said, "I understood you tonight. I still do, right now. Not as Shuichi. Not because of the Loom or my territory or any of that. But because… you're Kurama, and I know you."

No immediate reaction flickered in his eyes. For an interminable breath, he was nothing but a statue, even the shades of his Loom frozen, but then his tongue flitted out, wetting his lips as he dipped his head. A smile glimmered in and out of existence, gentle and fleeting.

On its heels, a pulse of purest indigo rippled through his threads.

Its depth, its hue, its _meaning_ —took her breath away.

* * *

AN: I meant to have an entire other Michi and Kurama scene in this chapter, but it ran much longer than I anticipated, and I was stuck on it for weeks, so I pushed that scene to Chapter 34. Forgive me!

In the meantime, though: indigo threads? I'm not defining the color's meaning here intentionally. But it has been mentioned elsewhere in the fic (and in a tumblr post I made ages ago that included my list of all the thread colors). If you want to go searching, Chapter 14 is one such place you might find it. More on that next chapter!

(Random canon bit: I know demons don't have traditional heartbeats, but since Kurama is living in a thoroughly human body, I'd imagine he has a heartbeat while in Shuichi's form. Doctor's visits as a kid would've been REALLY awkward if he didn't. When he reverts to Yoko, I'd think that heartbeat would disappear. Or, at least, that's the headcanon I'm running with in this story.)

My family had to say goodbye to one of our dogs this week, and I've been a grief-stricken space cadet ever since, so I never managed to get a chapter alert up on my Tumblr regarding last week's chapter for my fic 'The Unknown Grounds.' I'm not sure if FFnet has gotten its act together with alerts or not, so if you read TUG, know that Ch. 10 is live.

Anyway, big thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter. I've had an incredibly hard two weeks since the last time I posted BBL. Hearing from you all has been a small dose of positivity in an otherwise rather bleak stretch. All my love to: knightsqueen05, MissIdeophobia, Laina Inverse, Shell1331, Beccalittlebear, roseeyes, ThatOneGirl, ahyeon, and ThePersonWithTheReallyLongName.


	34. The Indigo Glow

If Kurama's room in Genkai's shrine was a perfect representation of the exterior he presented as Shuichi Minamino, then the bedroom in his apartment was a literal embodiment of the soul Michi had come to know as Kurama.

A wide window formed the wall to the right of the door, but she could barely glimpse its sweeping glass panes through the veritable jungle growing along it. With meticulous care, a series of finely crafted bamboo shelves had been arranged in front the window, allowing for dozens of plants in all manner of pots to rest before the glass. During the day, Michi imagined that window must cast a swathe of afternoon sunlight over the entire room, but right now, as she slipped across the threshold, moonlight spilled through the glass instead, limning the plants in silver. The effect was almost magical, as if tiny faeries flitted about the petals of the blooming flowers, leaving behind trails of ethereal dust.

Then again, maybe there _was_ magic in these plants.

She couldn't put it past him.

Opposite the window, Kurama's bed sat nestled against another series of shelves, but unlike their plant-bearing brethren, these cases were home to dozens—if not hundreds—of books. She recognized a mere handful: a few literary classics nearest the ceiling and some favorites of her childhood clustered on the shelf closest to the head of the bed.

Most, however, were mysteries to her. A few struck her as textbooks or gardening guides or other Human World teaching materials, but the vast majority would never be found in Mushiyori University's campus library. They were leather-bound and ancient, with titles scrawled across bindings in languages that meant nothing to her.

Without thinking, she moved deeper into the room. Soft as a whisper, the door shut beneath Kurama's steady hand, and she glanced back at him for only a second before leaning closer to the shelves and running a palm over one gilded spine.

The book's craftsmanship left her awestruck. Half-expecting him to scold her about keeping her dirty, oily hands off his precious texts, she pulled the tome from the shelf, then cradled it in one arm as she flipped through the pages. "These are from Demon World?"

"In part."

She turned back to him, looking up from the indecipherable characters on the title page in time to see him shrugging out of his black sweater with the easy fluidity so innate to all his movements. Beneath, he wore only a white undershirt tucked into his dark wash jeans, and her heart stuttered as she dropped her eyes back to the book.

"And the rest?" she asked.

"Spirit World. A few even from here in Human World, though written by psychics or demons so long past that their exact origin is untraceable."

She whistled softly, tracing a thumb over the gorgeous typeset looping across the pages of the book she'd chosen. "How'd you get your hands on all these?"

Stepping close enough to read over her shoulder, Kurama chuckled, and the hum of it crackled like electricity up her arm. His Loom hovered at the edge of her sight, flooded with contented blues. "It's late, Michi. What happened to sleep?"

"Humor my curiosities."

A burble of amethyst flickered amongst his aquamarine happiness, not nearly as dark as the indigo she'd glimpsed in the living room, but a reminder that it had been there, that stunning shade caught somewhere between blue and violet. Love. The color of love.

What an impossible thought.

"I've acquired them in my years here in Human World. More frequently in the last few than in my adolescence." He lifted the book from her hands and flipped it closed to study the cover. "It's been a matter of diligence, some curiosity of my own, and a few sticky fingers."

"You stole them?"

"Not all. And not outright." Lips twisting into a wry smile, he returned the tome to its home upon the shelf. "I merely rescued a few from owners who couldn't appreciate their merit."

Michi muffled a laugh against her wrist. "Ah, yes. All rescue missions, I'm sure."

"Have I done something to suggest I'm anything other than an upstanding citizen?"

"I don't think you want me to answer that."

Amusement and flirtation tangled in a kaleidoscope of washed-out color across his threads, and Michi realized with a start that, at some point, recognizing his faded shades and translating them to her more traditional understanding of Looms had become so second nature it rarely even tripped her up anymore. It was just another way she'd grown to know him. Little different from remembering his birthday or differentiating between his lexicon of smiles.

And suddenly, before she'd even processed the words, she said, "I know Yusuke was just giving us a hard time before, but I really mean it: I don't want you to sleep on the couch."

At once, he went still, frozen but for the barest tilting of his head. "Apologies for the pedantry, but you _don't want_ me to sleep on the couch? Or you _want_ me to sleep here?"

A blush scorched in her cheeks, and she peeked at his bed, unable to stifle thoughts of the chaste night he'd slept in her apartment so long ago. She wasn't sure she wanted it to be so chaste anymore. "Can't it be both?"

His gaze roved away from her, peering through the leafy wall of greenery to the skyline beyond the window. "What you said earlier… Does that mean you've decided? About—" He cut himself off abruptly and spread his palms, the gesture helpless and uncertain and so completely outside his norm that she ached to stop him from ever feeling so unsure of himself ever again.

"About us?" she finished for him. "Yeah, I think I have."

As soon as the words left her lips, a memory of Genkai rose in her mind. From that night at the shrine when Michi had learned who Shuichi truly was. But the moment she recalled had come before Kurama's arrival, before the instant when her life veered forever onto a new course—or, at least, a course she hadn't realized it had already been set on.

The memory was clear as crystal, and it brought her straight back to Taki's bedroom, to the terrible instant when she'd looked in on him and discovered his Loom had gone brittle and hard, his threads painful in their wrongness. Genkai had asked if he was a threat, and when she'd responded with thoughts instead of promises, the woman's answer had been as cutting as it was true.

 _Thinking and knowing are different beasts_.

Yet here she was again, hedging her bets. Softening her words out of fear. Because she was scared—oh so very scared—of getting hurt again.

But if she'd actually decided, if she'd actually chosen, then it was no more fair to her than it was to Kurama to offer half-truths.

"Can I correct that statement?"

A crease crinkled his nose as a cord of forest green fear coalesced amongst his threads. Nevertheless, he nodded, forcing a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Of course, Michi."

"I don't 'think' I've decided anything," she said, easing closer to him. He watched her warily, soaking in her every movement, every tiny shift of her body, and for perhaps the first time ever, Michi got the distinct sense _he_ was not the predator and _she_ was not the prey. "I _have_ decided. Honestly, I'd made this choice a long time ago. It just took me awhile to say it."

A flash of indigo shimmered through his Loom.

She snagged his hand in hers, looping her pointer finger through the crease of his palm and tugging until the distance between them disappeared. "So stay, Kurama—but only if you want to."

The indigo spread, spilling across his threads in billowing loops, and as his free hand rose, fingers stroking over the blush still burning in her cheeks, she knew what was coming—knew it and welcomed it. Buoyed by that flush of impossible color, she rocked onto the balls of her feet, rising to meet him, her lips finding his as her eyes fluttered shut.

It wasn't a verbal answer, and yet it said so much more than words ever could. His lips over hers, his fingers tangling in her hair, his Loom painted across the back of her eyelids in shades of not just indigo but imperial purple, too—all clamoring against her senses, confirming that this was here and now and real, as real as anything could ever hope to be.

She needed it. She needed him. And oh goodness, how she'd missed him.

More than that, even without his Loom, even if she hadn't possessed her territory, she'd have known he'd missed her, too. That truth seeped from his every gesture, from every press of his lips, every sweep of his tongue, every soft hum of her name.

He'd missed her—and he needed her, just as much as she needed him.

In the end, it was Michi who wanted more first. Electricity fizzing in her veins, she unclasped their hands and reached up to cup his jaw. She pressed closer, leaning into the strength of him as his newly freed hand glided beneath the loose of hem of her sweatshirt and curved along her waist.

Kissing him now was different than before.

He was Shuichi, but he also wasn't, and that truth had never been more apparent than it was then. Shuichi had always been graceful, seemingly effortlessly so. But in kissing Kurama when he no longer sought to hide bits of himself, she realized all the feigned humanity that had lived in the version of him she knew as Shuichi.

With Shuichi, there'd been the occasional collision of noses, infrequent failures to predict one another, awkward incidences of knocked limbs or unintentional separation. He'd been confident, smooth and graceful, but even still, not without failings.

Now, though?

There was none of that. In dropping his human act, he'd stopped pretending he couldn't read her body, that he couldn't predict her movements with preternatural ease. He reacted to her before she'd even realized her next intention herself, and it became too easy to lose track of which choices were hers and which were his—and easier still to forget where the divide between them had once fallen.

But then, he wasn't the only one who'd changed.

 _She_ was different, too.

She understood him in ways she hadn't as Shuichi. His scars. His callouses. His hidden muscles. Kissing him wasn't like kissing a human, because _he_ was not a human.

But he was Kurama.

Her Kurama.

It was only when the back of her calves bumped against his mattress that they broke apart. He'd left her breathless, her sweatshirt's hem askew atop her hips. Physically, he was hardly ruffled, almost criminally put together, but that was just another mask. It couldn't hide the smoky desire clouding his eyes or the riot of imperial purple that had dyed his Loom dark as a plum, and as he dragged his thumb gently along the swell of her bottom lip, she let her eyes flutter shut again, content to float amongst his sea of purple.

"Michi," he murmured, breath ghosting over the shell of her ear.

A million meanings hung in those two measly syllables, but right then, clinging to him, her heart racing against her breastbone, she wasn't ready to confront anything more than the most immediate interpretation. Clumsy, fumbling from the thrill of his proximity, she pushed her hair behind her ears and whispered against his throat. "Have anything I can wear for pajamas?"

The laugh that thrummed through him in answer set her toes curling against the hardwood floor. "I'm afraid I lack a stash of my cousin's clothing to offer, but you're welcome to anything of mine."

A flick of his wrist drew her attention to his dresser and closet, and as he pulled away from her, intent on delivering the promised pajamas, she sank onto the edge of the bed, giving up on maintaining her unsteady footing. She couldn't look away from him as he worked, opening drawers and rifling through the contents within. The rippling flow of fluid muscle beneath his white t-shirt was mesmerizing, and even once he turned back to her, pajama pants and a navy shirt in hand, she didn't bother pretending she hadn't been staring.

A smile played across his lips, teasing and bright. "I imagine I'll be able to scrounge up a toothbrush for you, too. Tomorrow we can go back to your apartment and pack whatever you'll need while we sort the rest of this out."

Michi's euphoria tapered. Not entirely, not so thoroughly as to bring her crashing back to reality, but still enough to dampen her pulse's chaotic rhythm.

 _Right_.

No matter what had changed between her and Kurama tonight, there were bigger machinations at work. She'd only come here to begin with because her own home had grown unsafe, and until the Unweaver was caught, unsafe it would remain. But answers were out there. Some means of understanding the Unweaver's cryptic talk of graves was waiting to be unearthed. How they'd find it, Michi couldn't yet begin to guess. But they would. Eventually.

Just not tonight.

Knotting her fingers in the soft fabric of Kurama's bedspread, Michi said, "I know there are a million pieces to discuss, dozens upon dozens of angles to explore, but just for now, could we pretend none of that is looming?"

A flush of pink bloomed at the edges of Kurama's Loom, but he nodded and handed her the make-shift pajamas, allowing his fingers to linger over hers, scarred tips playing across her knuckles. "Of course, Michi." He drew back, those long fingers delving into the pockets of his jeans. "Now let me go dig up a toothbrush. I'll leave it in the bathroom, and meet you back here—" he dipped his chin meaningfully toward the bed "—in fifteen."

Which was his very oblique way of saying that he'd stop discussing the Unweaver with her, but he couldn't let the woman rest entirely. Not quite yet.

"You're going to contact Hiei, aren't you?"

A sprig of lime darted through his threads, followed quickly by a wash of amused blue. "Guilty as charged."

"Fair enough." A shy smile tugged at her lips, but she didn't give into the instinct to duck her hide and hide her blush. She was done hiding anything from him, let alone this. "Then I'll see you back here. Take your time."

The teasing laughter crinkling around his eyes loosed a wildfire in her belly, but before she could call him on it, he swooped down in a move that no mere mortal should've been able to manage so gracefully. Then he kissed her—firm and feverish and real. Oh so very real.

"Fifteen minutes, Michi. At most. Understood?"

Every word brushed his lips against hers, and she shuddered as she nodded, wishing he need not go at all. "You bet."

* * *

Michi climbed into bed before Kurama returned.

She'd heard him in the living room, speaking to Hiei in hushed tones, but whatever news the demon might've delivered was lost on her, trapped within Kurama's phone. Not that she was complaining. She was done burying her head in the sand and ignoring the intricacies of the halfway house's operation, but that didn't mean she had to know every second of every development. She'd get answers in the morning, and that knowledge would suffice for now.

As promised, Kurama had left her a toothbrush in the bathroom, plus a washcloth and proper towel, though the notion of taking a shower now, as exhausted as she was, nearly set her into a laughing fit that surely would've convinced the boys she'd lost more of her mind to the Unweaver than she'd let on. If there was a shower in her future, it could wait until after sleep.

What Kurama hadn't accounted for was her make up. The night's panic had wreaked havoc on her eyeliner and mascara, but even still, more than mere water was needed to remove the vestiges. Lucky for her, a quick scan of the cabinet below the sink revealed cleansing wipes tucked safely way. She'd need to thank either Keiko or Yukina next time she saw them; they were lifesavers.

Her face clean, she'd lingered a moment longer to assess the scratches the Unweaver's ragged nails had torn across the underside of her wrist, then she returned to Kurama's room, flicked off the lights, and clambered between the sheets. By choice, she left the curtains open and lay on her back, staring up at the green-dappled shadows painted across the ceiling by the street lamps and moonlight seeping through Kurama's meticulous plants.

The effect was ethereal and mesmeric, like being transported into another world—into Kurama's world.

Twisting the hem of his too-long sleeves between her fingers, Michi breathed deep. The sheets smelled of him, of crisp soap and earthy loam and a scent she'd once thought might be cologne but now realized must be the subtle fragrance of the plants he held so dear.

It was almost enough to distract her, almost enough to keep her thoughts from dragging her back to the square Dai had destroyed, back to those horrible moments under the Unweaver's influence. Almost, but not quite. Only Kurama himself was grounding enough to keep those memories from writhing to the surface, and now they surged back, snagging her on sharp hooks that dug beneath her skin.

She curled onto her side, knees pressing up toward her chest, and forced a fresh breath into her lungs.

The Unweaver wasn't here. In all likelihood, she'd never dare to come close to this place. If Asato was to be believed, the ex-Detectives were too strong to be faced head on by even the most skilled fighter, let alone someone as fragile as the Unweaver. Better yet, in the morning, she could call him and ask that when he returned from Genkai's, he brought dozens of wards with him. Then they could plaster all their homes with seals—with protections that should've been in place long ago.

But even with that plan in mind, she couldn't silence the fears prying at her, niggling and worming and snaking through her veins. The creeping touch of the Unweaver's powers clung to her like oil slicking her skin, and as with a petroleum spill in the ocean, she might never be completely free of it again.

It had left her unclean. Tarnished.

Damaged.

Or maybe that was only in her head. Maybe she was fine. Maybe she was her usual self. Just as she'd promised Kurama and Yusuke and Kuwabara.

But what if she wasn't? What if the Unweaver wasn't so easily evaded? What if even Michi's territory wasn't enough to keep that woman at bay?

If any of that were true, if there was even the slightest chance she was compromised, didn't she owe Kurama honesty?

Yes. Of course. _Of course_ , she did.

And yet, when he returned, easing the door open with nothing but a whisper of wood sliding on a well-greased track, she made no move to tell him. She couldn't force the words to her lips. Not even as he slipped beyond his racks of plants and drew the curtains closed. Not even as he stripped off his undershirt and jeans, swapping them only for a pair of pajama pants to match those he'd lent her. Not even as she lifted the blankets and welcomed him into their warm cocoon.

Instead, she curled against him wordlessly and splayed a hand across the smooth planes of his stomach, his skin taut beneath her palm. His chest rose and fell with his breathing, and in the darkness, she could make out the faintest warping of his Loom around her knuckles. Perhaps if her own Loom weren't invisible to her, she'd see its threads tangled with his now, strands of indigo and lavender blending together until she could find no hint of their beginning or end.

In her imagination, it was a beautiful sight to behold.

He lifted a hand, fingers trailing through her hair as he rolled onto his side to face her, but he said nothing, at ease in the silence. The pale blues of his Loom shone with a contentment she no longer felt—a contentment that had been hers fifteen minutes prior only to evaporate from her fingers like mist in the short duration of his absence.

Saying as much proved impossible, but softly she asked, "Hiei's okay?"

"He's well enough." Kurama chuckled so gently she sensed it more as puff of air against her cheeks than as any sort of audible noise. "Angry. More than a fair bit riled. But then, he's Hiei, and that's to be expected."

"Fair enough."

The pace of his fingers' stroking shifted, his hand winding deeper into the roots of her hair, his thumb tracking across the back of her neck. "You found everything you needed?"

"Mhmm."

"Then why the disquiet?"

"What?"

He rocked backward, head angling, hair shifting in a wave. One finger flicked out to tap her nose, then pointed to his own. "You smell as though you're about to bolt, and unless I've horribly misunderstood what's transpired this evening, it isn't because of me."

She tried for levity, reaching for a joke. "Are you suggesting I should've taken the hint and showered?"

This time, he offered not even a trace of laughter. "Are we or are we not done with secrets?"

Her eyes shuttered closed.

She didn't want to talk about this, didn't want to delve into the horrible depths, didn't want to relive the violation of the Unweaver's manipulations. Just for tonight, she wanted it to be over. Just for right now, she wanted to pretend everything was simple—that she was sleeping over a guy's apartment because they were picking up where they'd left off after a messy misunderstanding, that this was some cliché, stupid hook up from a particularly corny romantic comedy, that she'd call Runa in the morning and gush about how unfairly gorgeous Kurama was without a shirt.

It had to be that.

She _needed_ it to be that.

"Tomorrow," she said. "I'll tell you tomorrow. In the morning. Or maybe when we get Genkai and Asato on a communicator. Please."

"Michi…"

She didn't open her eyes—knew she'd crack if she looked at him—but his pink concern lapped against her awareness anyway, soft and evanescent, yet no less inescapable. A gulp of air filled her lungs, and in a rush, she grasped for words, settling on: "Before I knew who you really were, back when you were just Shuichi, we never defined what this was between us. Not really. But I'd like to. Now, I mean."

Instantly, Kurama's Loom shifted.

The coral stayed, dim as it was, running like an undercurrent just above his core, but purples bloomed brighter, thriving in teeming coils across his threads. Wordlessly, he laced his fingers through those she'd curled over his waist and pulled their interwoven hands up between them. Light as the kiss of a butterfly's wings, he grazed his lips across her knuckles, then untwined their hands and traced his faint callouses down each of her fingers, over each curve and crease, massaging and teasing and learning.

He waited until she opened her eyes to speak, and when he did, it was with a coy warmth that set fire to her veins. "I recognize what you're doing, Michi, but—" another kiss; this time directly in the center of her palm, lingering long enough that she felt the brush of his lips as he continued, "I'll play along, anyway. For tonight only." A third kiss, now in the valley between her thumb and pointer finger. "And yes, I'd like the same."

An answer was hard to find as his lips shifted again, finding the underside of her wrist, right over the jumping stutter of her pulse. "Then when you next pick me up on campus and Runa inevitably asks if you're still just my friend…"

"You'll answer 'no.'" Deliberately, the scarcely subdued plum in his Loom proving he knew what his touch did to her, he returned her hand to his hip. His guidance sent the very tips of her fingers slipping beneath the band of his pants before his own found the back of her neck, weaving through her hair. "Provided my years of study haven't failed me, I believe the proper human term might be 'boyfriend.'"

Refusing to give into his charm completely, she squeezed his hip. "Don't pretend you're not sure. You haven't flubbed a single human concept yet. I'm not falling for it."

His next kiss landed on her brow, fleeting but firm. "Ah, yes, but Shuichi Minamino hasn't yet been a boyfriend. We've moved beyond his realm of expertise."

Stifling a gasp as his thumb stroked along the hollow of her jaw, she managed to whisper, "I don't believe that for a second."

He chuckled. "I assure you, Michi, there have been no girls invited home to meet my mother, no sweethearts brought along to work events, no introductions to my old team."

She shook her head against the pillow, bangs tumbling into her eyes. "That's not what I mean. I believe you aren't lying. But I don't think _any_ of this—" she squeezed his waist again, letting her thumb nail nip at the valley swooping down from his hip "—is new to you, and I'd wager that's as true for Shuichi as it is for Yoko Kurama."

"Perhaps you're right." While they lay in the dark, her eyes had grown accustomed to the poor lighting, grayscale giving way to pale color, and despite the shadows, she didn't miss the smile-lines webbing out from his eyes right before he leaned in to kiss her properly. He was here and gone in a second, seemingly kissing her purely to verify he could, and as he eased back, he said, "But that doesn't change this."

"No," she agreed. "It doesn't."

When he kissed her again, the hand in her hair tilting her head to accommodate him, she stopped pretending she had any trace of composure left. With desperate urgency, she tugged him closer, and he complied with innate grace, one leg threading between her own as he rose above her.

She ceased to exist outside the places where they touched—the heated tracks left by his lips as they traveled from her own down to her jaw then lower still to her neck; the press of his fingers, roughened by callouses she forgot to anticipate even after all these months, even after learning their origin; her own hands, curved around his hips, clutching at him, one palm sliding up, up, up over the grooves of his spine until her fingers found his silken hair.

Through it all, his threads flooded her senses. They were still _his_ threads. Still faded and pale. Still approximations of the colors plaited through most Looms. But they encompassed her everywhere, a net of lavenders and amethysts and indigos and dusky plums. Purple in all its shades.

It was instinctually, without even thinking, that she unfurled her territory.

She yearned to be closer to him, to weave her own, invisible threads through his tapestry. But she couldn't do that. She didn't know how. That skill lay beyond her, for now, if not forever. Her territory, though, didn't have to remain contained. Not anymore. And not with Kurama. Not in the presence of his soothing, impossible Loom.

No headache rose in desperate protest as she pushed the bounds of her power beyond her nerves, beyond her eyes, beyond her body. It unfurled over them, stretching to encompass the rumpled expanse of Kurama's bed.

At once, his threads grew, not brighter necessarily, but clearer. More crystalline. More beautiful still. Simultaneously, Kurama stiffened, one sharp breath rolling across her cheeks as he pulled back.

His arm came to rest beside her head, a fist curled against the pillow, bracing him above her. "Michi," he all but breathed, "is this…"

"My territory."

"I didn't realize you'd mastered expanding it."

Blushing, feeling the caress of his lavender affection and powder blue pride as if they were true cloth laid across her skin, she tugged him close. "I haven't mastered anything, but I wanted to see you. You and your Loom." His eyes flitted over her face, curious and warm, and his lips parted, but she spoke before he could. "The way it—and _you_ —are meant to be seen."

And then she kissed him.

Again and again and again.

* * *

AN: Whelp, the whole gang was supposed to be in this chapter. In fact, a whole bunch of things were supposed to be in this chapter, but then Kurama decided it was time for some indigo threads and a whole lot of fluff, and here we are instead. So _next_ chapter, the gang will make their appearances and then get to work solving the mystery of the Unweaver. Better late than never. (I was feel a wee bit weird writing heavy romance. I much prefer the slow burn to the actual fruition, but I rather like how this turned out.)

An update on my plans for this fic and for _The Unknown Grounds_ : The last three weeks, I feel off the productivity wagon, so I'm all out of chapters for TUG, but I'm part way through Ch. 37 for BBL, so my new plan is that BBL will go back to weekly updates until its complete (with chapters somewhere in the low forties). After that, I'll go back to biweekly updates on TUG. I hate putting TUG on a hiatus, but I know I won't be able to keep up with both stories at once, so better to just knock out the rest of BBL first. (And since the majority of my readers are BBL fans first, I figured you'd all appreciate that prioritizing.)

I've got a moodboard going up on my Tumblr for this chapter that I've been sitting on for weeks. Check it out if you're interested.

Continued massive amounts of love to the wonderful souls who review this fic. Absolutely ludicrous heaps of thanks to: ThePersonWithTheReallyLongName, ThatOneGirl, knightsqueen05, Gwen Flaming Katana, roseeyes, Laina Inverse, o-dragon, Shell1331, MissIdeophobia, GinaLiz, Beccalittlebear, and Sidako!


	35. Burgeoning Beryl

Early morning sunlight streamed through Kurama's plants like golden ribbons, their edges tinged verdant and otherworldly.

Michi stood barefoot before the shelves, one hand raised, fingers tracing over a frond so green it seemed impossible. The light filtered through it, highlighting veins beneath its sturdy cuticle, and as the curious track of her nail reached the leaf's stem, it curled, bending around her wrist. The sight of it—of this plant so readily capable of reaction—woke a shiver that wracked down her spine. Such a simple, concrete reminder of what Kurama truly was.

But no degree of unfamiliarity could make this display of Demon World flora any less captivating.

In that way, it wasn't so unlike its creator.

An hour ago, she'd roused from dreams of old women and half-dug graves to discover Kurama slipping from bed. He'd offered her an affectionate—and apologetic—smile as he scrounged up his pajama pants and drew them on, cinching them at the waist before moving to the closet to claim a sweater. When she'd sat up to follow, he'd shaken his head, murmured about the hour being thoroughly indecent, and trod into the hall. His parting words before the door slid shut urged her to catch another few hours rest, promising he'd return with breakfast before they joined the team for a call with Genkai.

She'd failed entirely regarding his first bout of instructions, sleep proving too evasive.

With Kurama gone, the truth crept back in. Her nightmare clawed out of the hazy pit of memories where dreams usually went to fade into oblivion and hunched its hulking mass around her, a companion in the dark, lurking and seething and promising that this wasn't over. The Unweaver wasn't done. Not with the transplants. Not with the ex-Detectives. And certainly not with Michi.

Still, she'd made an effort. She'd closed her eyes and willed the darkness away, rolling onto her side and drawing the blanket up, over her head, cocooning herself until all she could smell was Kurama.

The Unweaver followed.

The memory of the woman's frantic grip clutched at Michi's wrist, phantom fingers sprouting from the crescents of broken skin the Unweaver had left behind. The distorted rhythm the Unweaver's meddling had created in Michi's thoughts resurfaced, panic sending her breath skittering, her hands seizing useless fists of bedding as she fought for calm.

A half hour later, she'd given up on sleep, stumbled from bed, and staggered to the windows, desperate for light, desperate for air—desperate. Just desperate.

As the curtains rose beneath her trembling hands, the sunlight spilled in, flooding the gaps between Kurama's plants, painting dappled shadows across the floorboards. She'd stood there ever since. Lost in those colors.

At some point, she expanded her territory again, allowing even the Loom's most inconsequential filaments to flutter against her awareness. The gossamer threads slipped between the rays of light, pooling on the shelves and twining through stems and leaves and petals. The faintest twinge of a headache built for a moment, gathering behind Michi's eyes, but as she stood and breathed and boxed the Unweaver's creeping touch into the deepest crevices of her memory, that pain faded.

And then she just _was_.

For as long as she needed to be.

* * *

"I have to take back what I said last night," Michi admitted when Kurama at last returned to her, a tray of steaming food in hand.

Easing the door shut with a deft foot, Kurama cocked his head. "Which of the many things you said might you be referring to?"

Standing beside his bed, Michi kept her eyes on her work, folding the t-shirt he'd lent her with careful precision, allowing not so much as a single crease to fall out of place. His clothes had made for comfortable enough pajamas, but she wasn't ready to prance around the guys' apartment in borrowed garb. Dirty though they were, her own rumpled garments were a preferred alternative, and she'd swapped Kurama's pants and shirt for her leggings and sweatshirt just moments before his arrival.

"The bit about being okay." Her folding finished, she swept a palm over the faintest wrinkle in the shirt's front, then forced herself to add: "I'm not sure the Unweaver is actually out of my head."

Setting his tray down on his desk, Kurama pulled out his office chair and sank into it slowly. "Meaning?"

"I don't know. Just that my head's not on straight, I guess."

"Understandably so, Michi, regardless of the Unweaver's talents. Last night's events were… disturbingly abnormal—and, frankly, even that description doesn't do their consequences justice."

Turning to face him, Michi crossed her arms over chest. "I'm not in shock again," she said. "This isn't like the first time I crossed paths with her." Sighing, she paced to his side and studied the offerings he'd brought with him. Four bowls total. Two full of miso soup. Two heaped with rice and fried eggs. Steam rising in curling tendrils from all four.

"Keiko's here already?" she asked.

Kurama's brows drew together, no doubt thrown off by her subject change, but he nodded. "Good eye. She and Yukina arrived a half hour ago, and she's been squabbling with Yusuke in the kitchen ever since. Once Botan joins us, we'll get in contact with Genkai." An elegant sweep of his hand encompassed the tray's contents. "These are a special order—straight from Keiko herself. By her decree, everyone else needs to wait for Botan."

Of course. Keiko _would_ demand propriety from Yusuke and the others, barring exceptions of her own making. A surge of affection warming her chest, Michi bit her lip against a grin.

"I doubt Kuwabara's pleased about that."

"No less so than Hiei. He's positively fuming." Kurama's lopsided smile lasted only a heartbeat longer before melting away. "Can we circle back to the Unweaver?"

Claiming her bowls and utensils, Michi retreated to the bed, then sank to the floor, her shoulders resting against the mattress's edge. At once, Kurama started to rise, readying to give up his seat, but she waved him off. "My thoughts are all over the place. Maybe they're all mine, but I can't shake the fear that they're not."

"What part—if any—feels foreign?"

"I… don't know."

He'd lofted his chopsticks, but they hung inactive from his long fingers. His Loom rippled with yellows, though he said only, "I need more than that if I'm going to help you."

Maybe she didn't need help.

Maybe she didn't _want_ help.

The thought cracked through her like a whip, and she winced at its wrongness. She bit the inside of her cheek, heaved down a deep breath, then found words. "It happened just now. You offered help, and it felt _so_ badly like I don't want to accept it. But I do. Of course, I do." The steam wafting up from her soup woke grumbling in her stomach, but she couldn't bring herself to eat. "The same thing happened last night. I thought I should tell you, but I didn't want to. And part of that _was_ me. I know it was. How much, though? I have no idea."

"So then, if the Unweaver is interfering with your Loom, you believe she's doing so to distance you from us?"

Oh.

Maybe.

"I hadn't thought it through all the way to that conclusion, but yeah, I guess so."

Nodding as much to himself as to her, he crossed his legs, propping his left ankle atop his right knee and balancing his bowl of rice atop his calf. "Last night, you mentioned she made you feel as though you wanted to stay in the square, which is why you didn't run immediately, right? Did she manipulate any other feelings?"

Yes.

Michi squeezed her eyes shut. "First, I wanted to learn from her. About the Loom and how to use my territory and how to… weave. But I saw through that. I guess it was too wrong? Too much of an alteration? Then, the sensation changed. I started thinking that if I stayed, she could remove my territory. That she could cleave it away or something."

"And you wanted that?"

She dropped her chin to her chest in wordless confirmation.

"Do you still?"

A moment's hesitation gripped her. Here was the truth, in all its ugly glory. "In some respects, yes. It's what I've wanted for six years. No more colors, no more emotions, no more connection to the Loom of Life. But I don't want what the Unweaver made feel. I don't want to be cleaved. I don't want to lose myself like our transplants have been lost."

At last, Kurama put his chopsticks to use, and he chewed a large, leisurely mouthful of rice before formulating his answer. All the while, Michi watched his Loom, letting herself fall between the folds of his familiar presence.

Could she really claim she wouldn't miss seeing him this way?

"I don't think you need me to say this," Kurama said, "but I'll reiterate it regardless. Just once. When this is over, when the Unweaver is behind us and the halfway house's transplants have been returned to their homes, if you still want your territory gone, I'll do everything I can to help you close it permanently. I can't make promises. As far as I once understood it, there's no way to remove a person's territory once it's awoken, but the Unweaver has already proven that false. If there are other means—less invasive, corruptive means—I'll help you uncover them.

"But right now, Michi, we need you. And I don't mean myself or Yusuke or Genkai. I mean the halfway house and your transplants and all the humans who've found themselves caught in the Unweaver's destructive workings. Your territory is the closest thing we have to an equal… weapon, for lack of a better word. Without it—and without _you_ —our disadvantage is immense."

She already knew all that. Maybe not the part about him helping close her territory—though the vast research he'd done into the Loom of Life had been an easy enough sign to spot—but the rest? How much her territory served them?

That had been all too apparent for months now.

"My territory is important. I get what you're saying—"

Catching his rice bowl with the same hand that help his chopsticks, Kurama raised the other to quiet her. "No, it appears you don't."

When he made no immediate move to clarify, she leveled him with her sternest frown. "Kurama. No riddles."

He laughed softly. "I'm not laying out a puzzle. I already said precisely what you've overlooked. We need your territory, yes, but we also need _you_."

"You need me for my territory. That's not the same as needing me."

Setting aside his rapidly cooling breakfast, Kurama abandoned his seat in favor of a spot beside her on the floor. "Let me be perfectly clear," he said, left shoulder bumping against her right. His threads washed over her in a blanket of determined blue and affectionate purple, warming her as thoroughly as any afghan could. "Even if you never master a stitch more of your territory, you're already invaluable. In part, because you understand the Loom more concretely than any of us could ever hope to, regardless of your ability to manipulate it. But more so, because _you_ —Michi Kuroki, a powerless human girl in all but the most pedantic sense—have connected with the halfway house's charges in a manner no one else has. You're a part of our team, your territory notwithstanding."

"So what's the 'but?'"

Another laugh, this time bright and pealing. "Am I so transparent?"

"More than you'd like to be."

With elegant fingers, he lifted her miso bowl from her lap, lay claim to her spoon, and gulped down a mouthful. "You know, if we don't eat all this, Keiko might never grant you special treatment again."

"Kurama, the evasion master," Michi declared, striving for dry condemnation but failing as a laugh snuck in.

He ignored her. "Though given the circumstances, she might forgive you. I doubt I'd fare so well."

She prodded a playful elbow into his side, and the soup sloshed as he evaded. "Tell me the 'but,' you tease."

A second spoonful of broth went down before he sobered. Then, offering an apologetic smile in advance, he said, "In our conversation with Genkai, I'm going to a make a suggestion I fear you won't particularly care for, but I ask that you give it a chance, okay?"

"Out with it."

"Considering the number of transplants the Unweaver has impacted and the absence of evidence their Looms will revert to normalcy without assistance, I think it's imperative we work to further expand your control of your territory. With the Unweaver moving more quickly, we may be hard-pressed to manage so many unstable apparitions, and if we're truly save them, we need to ensure their Looms are whole and healthy."

Michi tilted her head. "Well, yeah. Hadn't we decided that already? That wasn't exactly some big reveal." She tucked loose strands of hair behind her ears, her gaze roving to his shelves of greenery as she let her territory unfurl again. "It's not that simple, though. The transplants needing me doesn't make me capable. I only just figured out how to expand my territory. That took _six years_. I don't think I'll be knitting Looms back together in a matter of weeks."

It was such an impossibly absurd idea that she almost laughed, but then she looked at him, and that tremulous laughter fizzled away on her tongue.

He was serious. Completely and unabashedly matter-of-fact. Everything from the bleached navy of his threads to the firm set of his jaw smacked of steady resolve, and though she felt the man who might love her in the soft trace of his thumb alone her cheek, there was a different man in his eyes, too.

A strategist.

A cold, clinical tactician.

A Spirit Detective.

"I know, Michi. I'm not asking you to do the impossible. I'm simply asking that you try. If weaving is beyond you, not a soul in all three worlds will hold it against you. But we need to be sure if it is or isn't. That's all."

 _That's all_.

Like it was a small thing. Like it wasn't embracing the same talent that rendered the Unweaver a monster. Like the creeping touch of the Unweaver's fingers didn't still remain a phantom around her wrist.

But it was what he wanted.

And he was right that it's what their transplants needed—what she owed them.

So be it, then.

"Okay. I'll try."

"Thank you." He leaned forward, his lips pressing over her right brow. "And now, let's eat. My stomach's future happiness depends on it."

* * *

As soon as Kurama cracked his bedroom door, noise hit Michi instantly.

Yusuke hollering in the kitchen. Kuwabara barking back from the living room. Those were expected sounds, ones she'd grown to welcome in the weeks since she'd become a frequent visitor here. What she wasn't as familiar with was Keiko, angrily calling for Yusuke to be quiet—and, judging by the yelp Yusuke issued next, not settling for simply telling him off.

In the barest of lulls that followed, bright laughter pealed down the hall, and as Michi and Kurama reached the corridor's end, two shocks of blue hair burst into view. Closest at hand, perched on the couch, sat Yukina, and by the door, unzipping leather boots and shrugging out of a jacket, stood Botan.

Which either meant Kurama's decision to join the others had been impeccable timing or the product of the spiritual awareness Michi had never manifested.

Probably the latter.

The moment Botan spotted them, her fuchsia eyes brightened. A whirlwind of chiming laughter and beaming smiles, she trod over, looped an arm through Michi's, and tugged her to the couch. "We'll take Michi off your hands," Botan said, winking at Kurama even as she guided—or, more accurately, pushed—Michi onto the couch's middle seat.

"She's hardly a burden to be lifted," Kurama answered drily. She felt his presence at her back, mere inches behind the couch, and the faintest trace of his threads trailed over her shoulders.

"Well, duh." Another ringing laugh from Botan. "Should I have said we're rescuing her from dreary, old you?"

Kurama's response was lost on Michi as Yukina's cool fingers grazed her elbow, drawing her attention to her left. "I'm so glad you're alright," the apparition murmured.

Alighting on the arm of the couch, Botan crossed her legs at the knee and laced her hands in her lap. Her threads swirled with excitable blues as colorful as her hair. "It was such a relief when the boys confirmed you were right as rain."

Michi tried not to wince.

If the flicker of mustard unease through Yukina's threads was anything to go by, she'd failed.

Time for deflection, then.

"It was a shock, more than anything." The shifting of a pale Loom in her periphery alerted her to Kurama crossing the living room to join Kuwabara and Hiei, and instantly, she missed him, though he'd truly gone nowhere at all. "I never suspected the Unweaver might look for me."

Botan, it seemed, hadn't noticed the stiffness in Michi's spine, and she nodded vigorously, hands flapping as she spun into a tale about her own night, out in the town where Oharu had lived, healing his victims. Michi barely listened.

She was too busy reeling her territory back in, settling it firmly in her eyes, dulling the manic throb of so many Looms packed into such a small space. All four ex-Detectives. Keiko. Yukina. Botan. It was too much at once, too much on her frayed, exhausted nerves. Last night with Kurama had been the distraction she'd needed, the boost she'd required to keep her feet under her—and this morning had helped, too—but he could only bolster her so much, and now everything had come rushing back.

She doubted it would go away any time soon. As long as the Unweaver was free, knitting her horrors into the Loom's careful patterns, there'd be no peace.

Nevertheless, Michi made sure to nod and hum and play the part of a captive audience as Yukina picked up the lull in Botan's story, murmuring about the frantic hours she and Keiko had spent waiting on news from Yusuke and the others. But even still, Michi's attention roamed to the others, checking in on each of the friends who'd become so dear to her.

Yusuke and Keiko remained in the kitchen, identifiable as much by the delicious aroma wafting around the wall as by the pitch of their voices, arguing and flirting in equal measure, their threads a jumble of indigo. Meanwhile, Kurama had joined Kuwabara and Hiei in a knot around the coffee table. Someone had dragged it away from the couch and strewn folders across its surface—files of the final transplants in need of withdrawal, most likely.

Whatever they were, they'd engrossed Kurama. He'd locked in on the reports, his focus dedicated to the materials spread before him, reading diligently as Hiei and Kuwabara bickered at his side.

Through all that organized chaos, the Ties That Bind wound like shiny, pearlescent snakes. Brilliant. Strong. Sturdy as steel cable. Linking these men forever, dyeing their team across the fabric of the Loom of Life for as long as they might live.

But their team extended beyond their foursome, too, even if the Ties That Bind didn't know it. It included these women. It included Genkai and Asato out in the mountains. It included even Yana and Kaito.

And somehow, unbelievably, it had grown to encompass Michi as well.

That line of thought in mind, she looked for the final member of this makeshift family, and when she went unaccounted for, Michi asked, "No Shizuru?"

Botan startled, cutting off her tangent about the last soul she'd ferried from Oharu's town, long before he'd taken lives himself, but it was Yukina who answered first. "Oh, no. Not today. She had a shift at work."

"And besides," Botan added with a smile, "other than coming along to rough up Kuwabara until she confirmed he's okay, Shizuru wouldn't be able to assist us much."

Michi's brow rose. "But you guys will? You two and Keiko?"

Yukina shook her head. "Keiko came to cook breakfast—" a grunt from the kitchen, deep enough that it could only be Yusuke, preceded the end of Yukina's thought "—though Yusuke had something to say about that, and I wanted to see Kazuma. Botan is here to help, though."

Smiling broadly, Botan pressed a pale hand to her chest, fingers splaying over her breastbone. "Kurama contacted me early this morning and said Spirit World's records might be of value to today's meeting, so here I am!"

Michi glanced back at the men, still crowded around the coffee table, Kuwabara on his knees now, sifting wildly through folders. What did they need Spirit World's registers for? Everything regarding the transplants was kept in the halfway house's files.

As if answering the questions Michi hadn't truly asked, Botan lowered her voice, the spark dying from her eyes, and added, "He mentioned something about a grave?"

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Smart. Kurama was too darn smart.

After all, the Unweaver's insistence on transplants having murdered humans was illogical. It didn't match facts. But maybe there was truth in there somewhere, jumbled though it might be. If Spirit World kept record of humans killed by demon hands—and it seemed unfathomable that they wouldn't—then perhaps answers lay in those archives.

Of course, Kurama had already thought to pursue that avenue. Who would he be if he hadn't?

Before Michi could answer Botan, Yusuke sauntered from the kitchen, a tray of steaming bowls balanced on one hand. All billowing confidence and cocky persona, he planted himself in front of the couch, thrust out a hip, and announced, "Breakfast, you useless moochers!"

"Yusuke!" Keiko snapped, emerging with a tray of her own. A laugh snuck its way into the end of her rebuke, and when she caught Michi's eye, she was smiling, cheery and content, her threads blue as the sea.

In moments, bowls were distributed. Two to each member of the assembled team, minus Michi and Kurama. The same meal had been served up, miso soup, rice, and fried eggs all around. Yusuke ran a lap with chopsticks and spoons around the room, and then a lull descended as everyone tucked in.

Except Michi, bereft of a bowl as she was.

In the lull, the roiling unease that had seethed in her gut since she woke to Kurama's departure grew to a roaring blaze, scorching her from within, and soon Michi shut both her eyes as she fought to breathe.

This wasn't normal.

She definitely— _definitely_ —wasn't normal.

At her side, Yukina reached out, a tiny hand slipping through Michi's. "Should we start? Or do you want time?"

Michi forced her eyes open and found all attention on her, a latticework of concerned coral and goldenrod disquiet stretching through every Loom present. "Let's get to it." She summoned her bravest smile, though she suspected it ran sharp at the edges. "Do we need to patch in Genkai and Asato and the others?"

"Bingo!" With a flourish, Botan produced one of her strange communicators from her pocket, flipped it open, and a second later, had Genkai on the line, the woman's gravely tone crackling from the tiny speakers.

"About time," Genkai growled. "I've been waiting since dawn."

Yusuke rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well, the wait didn't kill you. And that's all our loss, really."

"Can it, dimwit."

A brief pause, and then: "Michi?"

"Hey, Asato."

He sighed audibly, like he hadn't been confident she was okay until he heard her himself. "Can you fill us in on what happened last night? Kurama gave us a run down, but it's probably best to hear it from the horse's mouth and all that."

Unbearably aware of every set of eyes directed her way, Michi pulled a blanket into her lap and began to trace its threads, letting the pattern of knits and purls hypnotize her. "Sure."

It was the same story as the night before, though perhaps a bit more methodical, a bit less harried and scattered. Occasionally, Genkai interrupted with questions, prying into the Unweaver's mannerisms, her appearance, the way she spoke of the Loom. Genkai's thoughts seemed always one step down the line from Michi's own, connecting dots Michi had already planned to illuminate herself.

If nothing else, her years as Genkai's pupil had trained her to think in the same manner as the psychic. That much was clear.

As Michi's rambles drew to a close, Genkai directed her next statement to the group at large, not just Michi. "It's clear enough, then, that the Unweaver does in fact manipulate a person's desires. That must be her base ability, and it's what she's largely utilized against humans. But when interacting with demons, she seeks to destroy their Loom, which is what we've witnessed in our transplants."

"We reached the same conclusion last night," Kurama said. Like Michi, he wasn't preoccupied with eating, and he remained bent over the transplant files, thumbing through pages even as he spoke. "What that leaves us with is a series of questions I've not yet worked out how to answer. First of which is the quandary of whether the Unweaver's insistence on demon violence is a reality or a mere product of her own instability."

"That second option," Yusuke said, interrupting through a mouthful of egg. Shoving his chopsticks into his rice, he swallowed roughly. "I mean, duh. We know none of the transplants have hurt people. She's just a crack pot."

"You're quick to assume, Yusuke," Genkai growled. "Our transplants might be blame free, but they hardly account for all the demons in Human World."

Michi's breath caught in her throat.

What a simple explanation. And yet, one she'd never even thought to consider.

It should've been so obvious. The very occupants of this room—Hiei, Yusuke, and even Kurama himself—were proof that the presence of demons in this plane was not entirely regulated through the halfway house. If these three could exist, who was to say there weren't others?

"Precisely." Kurama's gaze swung to the couch, settling to Michi's right. "Which is why I invited Botan today."

"You want me to look into it?" The ferry girl sat upright, brows drawing together with the faintest crease. "Try to dig something up in Spirit World's records?"

"I do. Starting with six months ago and working backwards." He crossed his arms, left fingers drumming on his right bicep as his focus flitted away, off into the past. "If you'll all recall, the first instances of behavior that could be linked to the Unweaver actually started with psychics, not demons. Back in September, we had a few isolated reports of psychics misusing or entirely losing their territories. It wasn't until a month or so later that Taki exhibited the first signs of his white threads. I suspect those initial psychics were a test. Perhaps the Unweaver found it easier to manipulate humans, or maybe just easier to find them as compared to demons."

Kuwabara rubbed the hinge of his jaw. "So you're thinking a demon killed someone, and that's what set her off?"

"It's the best theory I have yet."

"Agreed," Genkai said.

Botan nodded firmly. "Right, then I'll see what I can find. Should we split the load? I could bring some records. It might move more quickly."

"If you can swing it," Kurama said, "though the rest of us may have our time limited by what I think constitutes our second largest concern."

As easily as if they shared one mind, Genkai finished his thought. "The rest of the transplants must be pulled immediately. Within days if we can manage it. Oharu's violence and the Unweaver seeking out Kuroki make it clear she's moved to her end game. If we're to protect what the halfway house has built, we must act before she can."

"Okay," Yusuke said slowly, syllables drawn out and uncertain. "But haven't we already been going as fast as we can? I don't know about all of you, but this pace has been kicking my ass. I mean, geez, I haven't even rolled my ramen stand out of storage in, I don't know, a month? At least?"

"And I'm the old lady, you lazy brat?" Genkai barked, feedback buzzing through the communicator's tinny speakers. "It's not as though your ugly mug requires beauty sleep. Get off your ass and do what needs doing."

Ah, Genkai. As charming as ever.

At least Yusuke was living proof Michi wasn't the psychic's only unsatisfactory pupil.

While Yusuke sulked, muttering under his breath a litany of vile swears, Michi offered, "I can jump back to helping every day. And I can afford to miss a class or two. Almost all the transplants left are mine, right?"

"Well… yeah," Asato answered, his reluctance as clear as the brightest Loom despite the dozens upon dozens of miles separating them. "But Meech, you don't need to do that. The team can run extractions without you—"

"I'm perfectly aware of that, Shade," she said, banking on the nickname to catch him off-guard, as it tended to do these days. "But if the Unweaver's worked her weavings on more Looms, then I stand the best chance of talking my transplants down without needing to subdue them physically."

Across the room, Kurama offered her a tiny nod, little more than a dip of his chin—quick, fleeting acknowledgement that he recognized her words, knew they'd come from him, and was thankful she'd taken him to heart.

Huffing, Yusuke muttered, "Jeez, the lot of you sound like we're running some freaking covert mission. Can we talk like normal people?"

Michi ignored him. "I can skip a class. It won't kill me. And logistically, it just makes sense."

"She's right," Kurama agreed with finality. "We need to act. With speed and efficiency."

Asato sighed. "Whatever you want to do, Meech. I'm game."

"That said," Kurama went on, pulling focus back to him, "Michi and I have agreed she needs to prioritize mastering further control of her territory. She has, at this point, learned to broaden it, and that's a start, but if there's the possibility she might be able to weave Looms back together, reversing what the Unweaver has done, I believe it needs to be explored."

"I'm not making any promises," Michi said after Kurama fell quiet. Her fingers knotted in her blanket, twisting the hem between her knuckles. "I can't even figure out how to touch a Loom or connect with one or whatever the first step is. We don't know that I'm actually capable of that. There's no reason—"

"Hey," Kuwabara interrupted. Somber but determined, he crawled across the floor on his hands and knees, then pulled her fingers free of the blanket and cradled them in his far vaster palms. His smile was gentle, his rough voice strangely soothing, as he said, "A few days ago, you'd have said the same thing about expanding your territory. Just because you haven't done it doesn't mean you can't."

Through the communicator, another deep, gravelly voice piped up. "Don't write yourself off, Meech." A rustle and a thump proceeded the rest of Yana's thoughts, his words clearer now , crisp with his nearness. "I bet you've got this."

Michi squeezed Kuwabara's hands and, striving for cautious optimism, clarified, "I appreciate the vote of confidence. From both of you. But that's what I was going to say already. I'll give it a shot. Kurama convinced me. Just… don't bank on anything."

Kuwabara grinned, his threads as blue as the clearest sky. "Oh, I'm banking on it. I've already got a bet with Urameshi. You're gonna make me rich, Kuroki. Count on it."

Well.

So much for even-keeled hopes.

* * *

The meeting carried on for nearly two more hours, Genkai and the men spiraling into ever deeper veins of planning. Michi filtered in and out, struggling to stay present, but a haze hovered at the edges of her thoughts, threatening to swallow her up if she let her guard drop.

The Unweaver's phantom fingers remained a ghostly recollection on her wrist, cold and dry and rigid compared to the smooth planes of Yukina's palm against Michi's. No second hand truly clamped around her forearm. Logically, that was obvious. And yet, she couldn't shake the sensation—couldn't stop imagining that hand twisting through her Loom, pulling apart threads Michi couldn't even see.

As the meeting drew to a close, she managed to tune in when Asato asked what supplies he and the other boys should haul back from Genkai's, and she put in a desperate plea for wards. Dozens of them. As many as Genkai could pull together. Not to protect her, but to protect everyone else.

Genkai complimented her good thinking, and Kurama's soft grin doubled down on the woman's praise, but Michi wasn't being cautionary. This was no proactive defense.

They all needed those wards. Now. Yesterday.

Until they had them, there'd be no true safety. She was sure of that now, even if she hadn't been last night. Twelve hours ago, being here had seemed like enough, being with Kurama had felt like all the protection she could ever need.

But it wasn't.

Neither he nor any other ex-Detective could protect her from the Unweaver. In fact, if Kurama was to be believed, it was _Michi_ who needed to be the protector. And the spectral fingers searing against her flesh made it quite clear that Michi was many things, but she wasn't that.

She wasn't the Weaver.

Not now.

Not yet.

And maybe not ever.

* * *

"You're staying here?" Keiko asked Michi as the meeting broke up.

The instant Botan powered down her communicator and cut them off from Genkai, Hiei had stalked to the living room's corner and taken up residence there, chin tucked to his chest, one elbow braced against a drawn-up knee. From the context Michi had gathered during the call, it seemed he hadn't slept a wink last night, too busy cleaning up the ruins of Oharu's time in Human World to find so much as an hour's rest. Apparently, he intended to change that now.

Still seated on Michi's left, her cold fingers laced through Michi's, Yukina watched him through the fall of her unnatural bangs, her head tilted a degree, her ruby eyes unreadable. Strokes of coral concern and magenta disappointment played across her delicate features in ribbons of garish color, but Michi didn't have it in her to decipher the meaning of those shades.

Instead, she looked mutely at Keiko as the girl claimed the seat Botan had abandoned in favor of a conversation with Kurama. Face bare of smiles, Keiko perched on the couch's edge, hands folded neatly atop her knees.

"Michi?" Keiko murmured when Michi gave no immediate answer.

Michi startled, shaking free of the frenetic disquiet thrumming in her veins. "Sorry. Yeah, I am. For the next few nights, at least. Until we figure out whether the Unweaver knows the location of my apartment."

From the kitchen, a burst of shouting announced Yusuke and Kuwabara nearly coming to blows over who had to wash breakfast's dirty dishes and who got to dry, but Keiko resolutely ignored them, not even a flicker of crimson annoyance spilling across her threads. Instead, her Loom prickled with mustard worry as she glanced down the hall to the guys' bedrooms, looking for all the world as if she hadn't even realized she'd done so.

"Are you comfortable here?" she asked after a quiet moment. "Shizuru has a spare futon mattress tucked away. If you wanted to, you're more than welcome to stay with us."

A sweet offer. Made all the sweeter as Michi made sense of the nervous energy coiling tight in Keiko's shoulders. Keiko didn't realize that Michi's relationship with Kurama had evolved yet again—how could she?—and she was trying, as subtly as she could, to spare Michi the pressure of sleeping here if she wasn't ready for the paths that choice might take her down.

And maybe Michi wasn't ready.

She certainly didn't feel it. Despite last night, despite this morning, despite how close she'd felt to him as her territory spread to encompass every loose thread of his impossible Loom, the gulf between them had never yawned as wide and fathomless as it did now.

Because he—and everyone else—stood on one side of that chasm, and she stood on the other. Not alone. But with _her_.

With the Unweaver.

"I'm fine," she said, voice cracking as the lie took shape.

"No, you're not." A tick of stubborn disbelief slipped between the syllables, but then Keiko softened. Coral flushed across her threads. "Michi, I can't imagine how terrifying yesterday was for you. But you know that's alright, don't you? Yusuke and the others… They're used to this. And before they got used it, they yearned for it. Yusuke wasn't happy until his life turned into an action movie. Not everyone is like that. Not everyone _needs_ to be like that. I'm not." She took a deep breath, bobbed her chin once, and then finished, "So if you're hurting, if you're rattled, you can talk to me. Or Kurama. Or whoever. Okay?"

 _No._

Not okay.

She didn't _want_ to talk to anyone, didn't _want_ to be a part of this _,_ didn't _want_ to hone her territory like she'd promised to do—but sitting there, faced with Keiko's fumbling assurances, her heart beating like a ragged drum in her wrists and chest and temples, she knew those wants weren't hers. They were the Unweaver's, woven through her Loom on poisonous threads. Now or last night or at some unknowable time in between, but unmistakably the Unweaver's.

Which was why her answer couldn't change—why she _would_ talk, no matter how much she didn't want to.

Because the Unweaver wouldn't win.

Michi wouldn't let her.

"Okay."

* * *

AN: Holy smokes, guys. SO MANY new people followed or favorited this fic in the last week. Like WAY more people than usually discover this story in a given week. I have no idea what brought you new folks here, but endless thanks for joining in!

I got halfway through editing this chapter when I realized I'd uploaded an old version to FFnet and I was reading that instead of what you see here. Had to double back and redo my edits of the first half to make sure I was giving you all the correct content. (That whole conversation with Kurama didn't exist in the first version!)

Big, ginormous thanks to reviewers old and new for the fantastic reception to last chapter. Y'all rock my socks. Thank you, thank you, thank you to: Dear author, Beccalittlebear, Sidako, Sky65, knightsqueen05, Laina Inverse, Shell1331, roseeyes, MissIdeophobia, ahyeon, GinaLiz, TheChronicLiar, Kasumi Uchiha, and xanaldy!


	36. Starkly Saffron

Their newly constructed plan allowed for a single day to recuperate, and Michi intended to put each and every second of it to use.

First, a trip home. Back to her apartment. Back to the place that had been her only haven for so long—now rendered violated. Unsafe. Broken.

Kurama accompanied her, and while he poured over transplant files in her living room, Michi packed everything she thought she needed. Clothes. Toiletries. Schoolwork. Into her backpack first. Then into a duffel bag when the backpack proved too small. And finally into a suitcase when the duffel bag's zipper refused to close without snagging on every hem she owned.

Each packing and unpacking took her ages, her mind swirling as desires that didn't belong to her clamored for attention, pounding in her skull, tugging at her muscles, zinging through her nerves. The urge to leave, to slip out the door without Kurama noticing, off into the streets to disappear forever. Then the urge to stay—forever, no matter how ardently Kurama begged her to go. The urge to scream at him for ruining her, for making her accept his monstrous kind, for tricking her into believing he could be loved—and that he could love her.

The urge to use her territory, in ways she refused to even imagine.

Eventually, when those yearnings grew too loud, she padded into the living room and rapped her knuckles on the wall. He straightened, one arm slinging over the back of the couch as he turned. "Michi?"

"Can you come keep me company?"

A scarlet brow crept upward, but in moments, he'd gathered his materials and ghosted to her side on silent feet. "Of course."

He fell into step like her shadow as she led him back down the hall, and she peeked at him sidelong, letting the emerald trailing through his Loom distract her. "Sorry for how long I'm taking. I keep underestimating how much I have to pack."

Faintest yellow trailed in sallow threads across his cheeks, eating away at his curiosity, but he let none of his unease sneak into his tone. "No rush. Best to bring everything you might need so we can avoid unnecessary return trips. I've got plenty to keep me occupied in the meantime."

Still, she ought to explain. Like she'd promised Keiko she would.

Inside her room, he lay claim to the head of her bed, nestling in a clear space amongst the pillows, careful not to disturb the clothes she'd considered bringing only to ultimately discard. As soon as he'd settled, he opened his top file and resumed reading, though the stark greens in his threads—unusually bright and arresting for his Loom—suggested that was little more than act to give her space.

Space she did not, at this particular moment, desire.

No sense beating around the bush, then. "The Unweaver is manipulating my threads."

The yellow in his Loom bloomed more starkly. "You're sure?"

"Yeah." She moved back to her suitcase, frowning as she jigsawed her straightener and curling wand into the front pocket. "I mean, I'm fine. Don't freak out or anything. I just… didn't want to be alone anymore."

"If I might ask, what has she caused you to feel?"

Michi considered lying or, at the very least, answering evasively. A bit of creative editing to spare his feelings might not have gone amiss. But then again, if the Unweaver's goal was to drive a wedge between Michi and the Spirit Detective team, keeping secrets only abetted the woman's sinister endeavors. So she offered no lie, no carefully reconstructed half-truth. Not even regarding the urge still slithering beneath her skin, the creeping, itching impulse to label him monstrous and corruptive.

As she filled him in, swathes of pink hurt darkened his threads, and though his expression remain unchanged, his pain revealed itself in other ways. A stiff closing of the transplant file in his lap. A tightening of his fingers, one fist forming in her sheets.

"None of that is reality," she said. Quick as she could, unconcerned with her lack of grace, she crawled across the floor and clambered into the bed beside him, heedless of the blouse crumpling beneath her. "You have to know those feelings aren't mine."

"But you never wanted to be so embroiled in Demon World affairs. That's not false."

"Once upon a time, I didn't, but nowadays? I'm not so sure." She offered a smile, tiny but firm. "I don't have to be a practicing psychic myself to stay involved with you and your friends and the halfway house. Keiko's taught me that."

"Michi—"

Boldly, she sealed a hand over his mouth. Not just a finger, but her entire palm. Silencing him completely. "Kurama, I made the choice to leave the halfway house's operation, but I also made the choice to come back. And I didn't do that for you. Nor did I do it for anyone else. Not even for my transplants."

For a second, her voice escaped her, lost as the weight of her next thought settled into place. Then she found words again, refusing to let this moment slip away, no matter what the Unweaver tried to convince her of, and as she spoke, Kurama smiled, oh so softly, his lips curving against her palm as he pressed a kiss to the center of her hand.

"I didn't do it for you," she said. "I did it for _me_."

* * *

From her apartment, they traveled two stops back up the subway to her favorite sushi place. Just like their last visit, Kurama ordered them sake—early afternoon hour be damned—but she put in their maki order, rattling off the menu's best selections without even cracking the pages open.

An hour later, stomachs full and hands entwined, they made a pit stop Michi wasn't expecting. A brief interlude for Kurama to pop into his dry cleaner and pick up a dozen hangers' worth of dress shirts and slacks. The errand was so normal—so painfully mundane—that it left Michi gawking on the sidewalk. He laughed at her the whole way home, his teasing smiles and dancing eyes enough to burn away the last vestiges of jitters sparking through her.

Their return to his apartment delivered them straight to a waiting Yusuke, and no sooner had Michi stepped inside than did he yank her to the couch, leaving her hopping on one tight-covered foot, the other still trapped in a boot. "Alright, Kuroki. You've evaded me long enough. It's time to kick video game ass." Before Kurama could weasel in a word, Yusuke flung a pointed finger his way. "Today's an off day. Genkai's orders. You can spend it studying transplants and reading dusty old books, but I'm rescuing Michi from you whether you like it or not."

And rescue her Yusuke did.

The afternoon lapsed into evening in what could've been hours or the blink of an eye. The shooter he'd picked for them weeks prior still felt unfamiliar to her, but she was improving, getting better every time he roped her in for a session, and it was easy to lose herself in the game's rhythm—though it might've been easier had Kurama not taken up residence in the armchair mere feet away, paging through ancient texts just as Yusuke had suspected he would.

Eventually, her gameplay grew sloppy and her eyelids drooped, heavy with the sort of exhaustion that didn't stem from missed sleep. Nonetheless, when her third yawn managed to infect Yusuke and he tossed aside his controller, she was perfectly content to power down the console, rock to her feet, and pad down the hall to Kurama's room.

In fifteen minutes flat, she stripped off her makeup, showered with near military efficiency, and swapped her dress for pajamas, then found herself standing before Kurama's plant installation, bathed in the streetlight spilling between the leaves. Her capacity to track the passage of time faded as she pushed her territory outward, letting it envelop all those plants and the delicate filaments of their gauzy Looms. She groped for loose threads, Kurama's insistence that mastery of her territory was key to saving their transplants ringing in her ears, a clanging, rattling gong that would not let her rest.

Nothing answered her call.

No fragile string welcomed the press of her presence. No magical understanding unlocked within her.

As always, the Loom of Life remained distant and unreachable, as if it were tucked behind a barrier she couldn't dream of cracking. Accessing it was beyond her. Whether Kurama believed it or not.

But she'd keep trying. For as long as it was warranted, she'd try.

If she was truly the Weaver by the end of her efforts, so be it. And if not? Well, she wasn't paying Kuwabara back for his ill-thought out bets—that was for certain.

* * *

By noon the next day, a train had carried Michi's extraction team an hour out of Mushiyori, well on its way to a secluded little village northwest of Genkai's temple. Michi sat beside Kuwabara, tucked into a cozy row, her knees braced on the seat ahead of her. She'd spent the first leg of their ride enveloping him in her territory, seeking in vain to wrangle hold of his threads, but as the train chugged ever-farther away from civilization, she pulled her phone from her pocket and checked the time.

"Runa's out of class now," she said. "Give me two seconds to call her?"

"Sure thing." He shot her a simultaneous thumbs-up, then wiggled downward and closed his eyes, yawning so widely his whole body shook with the effort.

Michi laughed and keyed open her phone. Two seconds later, she pressed it to her ear, the ring tone bright and cheery. It chimed once, then twice, before connecting.

"Where the hell are you, Meech?"

"Hello to you, too."

Runa's answering huff screamed of rolling eyes and crimson threads. "You don't miss class, Michi, and you definitely don't do it without telling me first, so sorry for the lack of chit chat, but what the heck is going on?"

"It's… complicated."

"Oh, yeah?" Sarcasm dripped from Runa's every syllable, sharp and biting—and, because Michi knew Runa too intimately for her own good, worried, too. "I'm pretty good with complicated. Why don't you try me?"

"It's not the kind of complicated I can explain over the phone." Or at all. But that was a separate issue for a different day.

"It's Shuichi, isn't it?"

An exasperated sigh caught in Michi's teeth. "This again? Let him go, Runa."

"I will if you do." Frustration crackled in Runa's tone, so stark Michi could practically see it inside the train, a tangled web of annoyed scarlet. "I won't pretend I know him, but Kurama seems pretty damn fantastic, and he's definitely in to you. Why mess that up for a jerk?"

Oh, if only Runa knew what she was saying. If only she had even the vaguest inkling that Kurama and Shuichi were one in the same. If only she were aware how truly absurd it was to disparage Shuichi and praise Kurama in a single breath.

"Runa—"

"No, Meech, I'm serious. Date a guy who's good for you. What's so hard about that? I get that you're hung up on Shuichi. Even though it's been months. Literal _months_. But at some point, you've got to make a clean break—"

"Runa, please shut up."

Runa's jaw closed with a snap, audible even over her phone.

"The concern is greatly appreciated," Michi said after the silence held for three tremulous seconds, "but also a bit outdated."

"Excuse me?"

"I _am_ dating Kurama, so… you can stop lecturing me. I've got things perfectly under control."

On Michi's right, Kuwabara lurched sideways, his bulky frame turning with comically robotic jerkiness. His jaw gaped open, dark eyes wide, lime snapping through his threads in neon streaks. Falteringly, he fumbled for words. "Did I just hear that right?"

Three rows ahead, Yusuke and Asato popped above their seats in tandem, Looms as shocked as Kuwabara's.

"It happened?" Yusuke demanded. "It _finally_ fucking happened? Like, officially?" The bark of his voice drew displeased eyes from a pair of women a row ahead, but if Yusuke noticed, he most certainly didn't care. Thrusting a victorious fist into the air, he crowed, "I knew it. Stupid fox thinks he can dupe me just because he goes to bed after me and gets up first. Hell no! I knew—"

Groaning, Asato slung an arm around Yusuke's neck and wrestled him out of sight, though from the lopsided grin on her cousin's lips, Michi knew better than to think this was the end of anything.

And then, of course, there was Runa.

Runa, who had spent the last fifteen seconds in muted, wordless disbelief, only to now ask: "Who was just yelling? Where are you?"

"A friend with no volumne control. We're on a train. I told you, it's complicated. And look, I know I owe you a gigantic explanation. About Kurama and—"

"You think?" Runa all but screeched. "Try about a thousand explanations."

"Right, sure. A thousand, then. I can't give them right now, though. Soon, but not now."

A beat of quiet stretched before Runa sighed, but just as Michi had known she would, she accepted Michi's deflection. Because she was Runa. And she knew Michi, better than almost anyone in the world—barring the whole territory nonsense. "Then why the call, Meech?"

"I'm going to miss classes for a few days. Maybe a full week. Any chance you could figure out my assignments? At least for the classes we share?"

"A _week_?"

"Complicated, Runa. It's complicated."

"Uh huh. So you've said." One more stint of silence passed, then Runa clucked her tongue and said, "Yeah, sure. I've got you covered. I'll even hunt down some of your classmates for the lectures I'm not in. But you owe me. Explanations _and_ dinner. Two weeks from today."

Two weeks.

Then Michi would come clean.

About everything.

"Sorry you gotta lie like that for us," Kuwabara mumbled after she hung up on Runa.

Michi shrugged, shoving her phone back in her pocket. "I've been lying to Runa long before you all waltzed onto the scene."

"Yeah, but it's worse now, right? I mean, you're with us pretty much all the time, and you're skipping classes and… well, I don't know what your friends know about Kurama, but it sure sounds like they don't know he's also Shuichi, so that's a whole other set of lies."

"Could you hear Runa?" Michi asked, surprised he'd pieced that much together.

"Nah. Just worked it out from context." He gnawed on his bottom lip for a second, elbows braced on his knees, hands laced loosely between his thighs. "I guess my point is that we just keep asking more of you, and you go along with it, because you're way too good of a person, and I'm worried we're gonna push you past your breaking point."

Without meaning to, she laughed. A ripple of mustard wove across Kuwabara's Loom in answer, and Michi needed no guesses as to why. Her laugh had been haunting, a little too on edge, a little too close to off-kilter.

Sighing, she admitted, "I'm definitely getting close. But I'm okay. Promise."

"Right, sure." He hesitated, then sat up straighter, broad shoulders bumping awkwardly against the row ahead of them as he swiveled to face her. "But one more thing, before I let it go. Look, Meech, all this stuff—" he wiggled his fingers wildly, as if summoning some arcane imp "—is weird, and it's not easy to learn, and I think we forget sometimes that not everyone _wants_ to master their spirit energy or demon energy or whatever. So if you can't figure your territory out—or if you don't want— we'll come up with something else. We always do."

"Got it." With swiftness that surprised even her, she snagged the wide palm reaching toward the back of his neck and gave it a squeeze. "Thank you, Kuwabara. Truly. Kurama's in my corner, but it's nice to have you there, too."

He grinned, sheepish and more than a little pleased, rosy heat blooming across his jutting cheekbones. "We're pretty good company to keep, huh?"

"Pretty good isn't the half of it."

* * *

That first extraction went smoothly. As did Michi's second and third. Between her ability to soothe and the ex-Detectives' capacity to subdue, her transplants fell into line readily enough, not always right away, but eventually—and that was what mattered.

Yana didn't have it so easy.

With all his transplants safely back at the halfway house, he'd started acting as the touch point on Michi's withdrawals that Genkai deemed the lowest risk. Which meant he was out of his depth, treading unfamiliar territory with demons far from inclined to listen. On all three days, his charges didn't relent without a tussle, and each night, over a batch of Yusuke's cooking, Yana lamented his failings, moping into bowls of steaming ramen and platters of fried gyoza.

It wasn't his fault, of course, and not a soul on the team blamed him, but Michi suspected it was only a matter of time before she knew his frustration personally—and once that moment came, it wouldn't matter how many times Kurama or Yusuke or Kuwabara assured her it wasn't her fault.

It still would be.

* * *

Whenever he could, Asato slotted himself into Michi's withdrawals.

It felt like weeks since they'd spent time together that didn't revolve around the halfway house, and if he was anything like her, he missed the dynamic that had risen between them over the last six years. Yes, their territories had brought them closer, but their powers hadn't universally defined the time they spent together like the Loom of Life now did. A break from all that tension was far overdue—and what solution was better than card tournaments on long train rides or forcing Hiei and Yusuke into the back of Asato's car, then piling into the front and spending the whole ride plotting the best way to avoid hosting Aunt Akane when she visited in the summer?

That Thursday, with just twelve transplants left to extract, they staked out a row on a small express train. Somewhere ahead, Hiei lurked, skulking in a window seat, still damp from the rainstorm that had caught them during boarding, and in the row at Michi's back, Kuwabara snored softly—and then not so softly—the readings he'd lugged along in his backpack abandoned in favor of an unplanned nap.

"Any progress?" Asato asked as he dealt her seven cards.

"On?"

"The whole being-the-Weaver deal."

She grimaced. "Not yet."

Setting aside the deck, he fanned out his hand. "Maybe you should skip an extraction tomorrow and head to the shrine instead. You've always had the strongest connection to Taki. Could be that some guidance from Genkai and a properly familiar Loom would… I don't know, unlock your abilities, I guess?"

Practicing on a cleaved Loom? The idea had the most tenuous merit imaginable, and she wasn't particularly eager to give it a try. "I worry I'd make things worse if I messed with a Loom already so fragile."

His nose wrinkled up as she played her first card, though whether that was because she took the book or because she'd punched a hole in his theory, she couldn't determine. "Guess that's fair."

"If the train isn't too busy on the ride home, I could give it a try with your Loom. You're about a familiar as someone can get."

Her next card won again, and this time Asato's pout _definitely_ had to do with his dud of a hand. "Worth a shot, probably. How are you practicing exactly?"

"You ask that like I have even the faintest idea what I'm doing."

He snorted. "A whole bunch of shots in the dark, then?"

"Pretty much. I've tried honing in on a single thread, and I've tried spotting patterns, and I've tried having my test dummy focus on a single emotion until it consumes them, and I've tried and I've tried and I've tried, but none of that has gotten me anywhere." Biting her inner cheek, she played two more cards in rapid succession, confident he had no way to beat them. From there, he won the remaining three—as she'd suspected he might—but it was too late, and she'd taken the first round.

"That's why I thought Taki would be a good option. It might be easier to work backward from something that's broken than trying to find the crack in something perfect, you know?"

"Maybe." But it didn't matter. She wasn't heading out to the shrine early, not when they were so close to wrapping up the withdrawals. By Sunday, it'd be over. The weekend would be crushing, with two extractions planned for Yana and Michi each, but by nightfall, the transplants would be safe. All of them.

Then she'd have time for next steps.

Quickly, she dealt out twelve cards, then spread her hand of six. "Let's focus on Sadako today, alright?" Mustering a flippant grin, she added, "And the fact that you're three wins down already, and about to lose your fourth."

He cursed loud enough to disturb Kuwabara's riotous snores, but his Loom glowed with contentment, soft and warm as an azure sky, and soon they were laughing, Michi's territory woes forgotten—for as long as they could be.

* * *

Sadako lived an hour's bus ride from the nearest train station, her rickety cottage tucked off the shoulder of a rambling dirt road. Out here, so deep in the weeds, there was no swathe of Looms to contest the shock of white concealed behind the bungalow's darkened windows, and Michi knew from a hundred yards out that they were going to like what they found beyond that glass.

Kuwabara sensed it, too. Immediately. "She's gone, isn't she?"

Michi wanted to disagree, to assure him Sadako was fine, hurting maybe, but not lost. Not like Ryota or Dai or Oharu. But she couldn't. The truth was too readily apparent—too overwhelming. Nonetheless, words came only by sheer force of will. "She hasn't cleaved yet, but her Loom is colorless."

Even Sadako's core had gone white as bone, leeched of any shade resembling life. In her notes back when she'd first placed the apparition, Michi had described Sadako's Loom like sun-dappled underbrush. The emeralds and mossy greens of curiosity and anticipation had dominated, the spaces between lit with nervous daffodil yellows. All that color was gone now, replaced by a white so brittle and cutting, Michi couldn't help but shield her eyes behind an ineffectual hand.

With the slow, slinking grace of a hunting feline, Hiei slid to the group's forefront. His boots scuffed up clouds of dirt from the narrow path leading to Sadako's front door, and as the dust settled over his toes, he drew his katana, the blade clinking loose from the scabbard. "I'll handle her."

Michi caught his sleeve, and his chin swung a degree toward his shoulder, bringing her into his peripheral vision. She cleared her throat roughly, her vision smarting under the assault of Sadako's Loom. "Just because her threads are white doesn't mean you need a sword to bring her in."

"Have you forgotten Ryota already?"

She flinched.

Hiei pried her fingers from his jacket, but he held her gaze for long moments, his navy threads cutting like wire against her territory. Then, a muscle in his jaw ticking, he sheathed his katana. "I have seen how this goes with Yanagisawa. When they're beyond reason, coddling them will only serve to hamper us—and put them at risk. Stay here." His focus flitted to Asato. "Both of you."

So there would be no sword.

But there'd be no her either.

Offering up an apologetic shrug, Kuwabara tramped after Hiei. Their feet kicked up dust clouds until they fanned into the dead grass not yet recovered from the winter's chill.

Frustrated, Michi balled her hands into fists within her sleeves. Her nails pinched into the hems, tearing at every loose scrap they could find. "Do you agree with this?" she asked Asato as Kuwabara took the stairs to the front porch gingerly, one hand down at his hip, fingers clutched as if they held a weapon she couldn't see.

Asato crossed his arms, his crisp, black coat distending around his shoulders. "About me being stuck here? No. But about keeping you out of it? Yeah. Pretty much."

"A bit misogynist, don't you think?"

He shrugged. "Probably more selfish than chauvinist. I mean, it's not like I think I'd be useful. Definitely less so than you would. But damn it, I want to be in _there_ , not out here." Another shrug, complete with heaving sigh. "Yell at me if you want to, but it's true."

Six months ago, she would've taken him up on that. For years, his fixation on Spirit World and the mythical former Detectives had vexed her. But now, as Kuwabara thrust open Sadako's door and Hiei crashed through a window, landing inside in a shower of glass, Michi wasn't sure she had the grounds to scold Asato, because though their reasons differed, for once, she didn't disagree with her daredevil cousin.

Impossibly, unbelievably, she wanted to be in there, too.

From the front yard, Michi viewed Kuwabara and Hiei's efforts as a kaleidoscope of color, a wash of determined blues and nervous yellows and frustrated reds swirling between the brittle strips of Sadako's white. The annoyance seemed aimed at each other, their Looms bleeding into one another, and no mustard shone in Hiei's vicious threads, but the stubborn willpower was shared between them, and soon enough, Kuwabara emerged from the cottage, a young woman unconscious in his arms. Hiei flitted out the window seconds later and yanked the curtains closed behind him, as if that was enough to mask the shattered glass he'd inflicted.

"So efficient," Asato drawled.

Kuwabara shifted awkwardly, Sadako's head lolling against his shoulder. "We didn't hurt her. Hiei knocked her out with the Jagan. It was as painless as we could make it. Promise."

"Uh huh."

Hiei ignored Asato's sarcasm. "She had no victims, unless they're hidden in the woods—"

"I doubt they are," Michi interrupted. "Like I said, she hasn't been cleaved. Ryota didn't start hurting people until the Unweaver ruined his Loom completely."

"Hn. Then we're done here." With surprisingly tenderness, Hiei lifted Sadako free of Kuwabara and draped her over his own shoulder. "I'll take her in."

He was gone in a blur of black boots and kicked up dust, and with him went the first transplant Michi failed to help at all. Just like that. And even though Kurama and Kuwabara had repeatedly said otherwise, she knew what this change meant. Her usefulness was shifting. Quickly. Too quickly. Soon the extractions would be over, and once they were, a Weaver who couldn't weave would get them nowhere.

The clock was ticking.

And she wasn't keeping pace.

* * *

AN: Well, this may be the first chapter of this whole fic that's gone up later than planned. Thanks, FFnet, for screwing up my track record.

But it's up! And that's something!

We've got about one chapter left before all of the shit hits all of the fans. From there, the chapter count gets a bit estimated, as I'm not sure how long the big climax scenes will end up running, but needless to say, we're closing on the end, and we're doing so fast. Big heaps of thanks to everyone who's been along for the ride, and especially timely thanks to last week's reviewers: WistfulSin, ThatOneGirl, knightsqueen05, Laina Inverse, roseeyes, GinaLiz, Shell1331, DeathAngel457, MissIdeophobia, ahyeon, and Sidako!

See you next week! (Hopefully without FFnet delayed my efforts!)


	37. Red as Rust

By Sunday morning, plans had shifted.

The transplants they'd withdrawn in the last two days had all been too far gone, too lost to the Unweaver for Michi or Yana to reach them. None had cleaved. Not fully. But they teetered on the edge, their Looms so fragile Michi feared their every breath might be their last before they shattered into oblivion.

It came as no surprise, then, when Kurama broke Genkai's decision to Michi over breakfast. The psychic had determined Michi's presence on extractions merely served to put her in harm's way, and with only four transplants awaiting removal, it no longer made sense for Yana or Michi—or Asato or Kaito, for that matter—to accompany the ex-Detectives. They'd handle these final transplants alone.

But even if wasn't a surprise, the unilateral ruling still rankled beneath Michi's skin.

Seated beside Kurama on the boys' couch, listening to Yusuke clatter around his distant bedroom and trying in vain to drown out Kuwabara's warbling from the shower, Michi asked, "What happened to all that talk of how helpful I am?" A petty question. Childish, even. And yet, one she couldn't help.

Kurama lips pursed, twisting ever so slightly at the corner. "This wasn't my choice."

"Maybe not. But you're the messenger."

Brows rising, he lay his chopsticks atop his bowl and appraised her, gaze steady and probing. "Michi, take no offense to this, please, but I have to ask: is the Unweaver meddling with your threads?"

Sighing, she shook her head, then splayed her fingers toward the wards plastered across the windows and walls. "I've been fine since we got those up."

"Of course. I was merely confirming."

Since Monday, her mind had been clear, the last vestiges of the Unweaver's twisted machinations wearing away as she threw herself into a week of breakneck transplant work. She'd told Kurama as much on nearly half-a-dozen occasions, and though she knew he was only providing a precaution she'd requested, it was hard not to feel defensive—as if he were insinuating she'd shirk her role in the extractions if not for supernatural interference coercing her otherwise.

Her hands curled tight around the bowl in her lap, and she squeezed her eyes shut as she said, "It's just hard not to feel slighted when my involvement is wrested from my hands right as we're verging on the finish line."

"Understandable. Though it's not a comment on you. Just the circumstances." Muted lavender affection woke in his threads and the lines smoothed from his forehead, his lips softening as the tightness around his eyes ebbed. "I know you want to be there, and if I had my way, you'd come along with us, but Genkai isn't wrong either, and her plans for you don't end at forbidding your involvement."

"Don't try to pitch it like she's got something cool to do," Yusuke declared, trotting down the hall from his bedroom with all the verve of a runner warming up for a marathon. With a flourish, he skidded into the center of the living room and took up a ghost boxing routine, fists pumping as he bounced on the balls of his feet. "It's basically homework, and no one's got time for that shit."

"It's a pivotally important task, Yusuke," Kurama answered flatly.

"Uh huh. Sure. Whatever you say, fox boy." He tossed Michi a wink, then muttered out of the corner of his mouth, "He's got his stubborn pants on. Might as well go along with it."

Judging by the prickles of steely blue winding through his threads, Kurama debated butting heads with Yusuke, but in the end, the faded navy shifted to lighter shades as calm suffused his Loom. "Botan believes she's narrowed the Unweaver's identity down to a handful of possibilities. Genkai requested you head to the shrine today to review the files, and potentially to try your hand with the Looms there. From my understanding, Kido suggested—"

Michi rolled her eyes. Hard. "Of course, he went straight to Genkai. He would, wouldn't he?"

Surprised lime darted through Kurama's threads. "Ah. So you've already had this conversation with Kido?"

"He's got it in his head I'll have better luck figuring out how to weave a Loom that's already broken." She glanced at Kurama sidelong, then loosed a drawn-out breath and leaned into his side, her temple coming to rest on his shoulder. "In my book, it's a surefire way to ensure I screw something up royally, but apparently my opinion's been overruled on that, too."

"A logical fear, but if Genkai felt the risk outweighed the possible return, she wouldn't have agreed to it."

Sure. But Genkai didn't know everything. She was as fallible to mistakes as anyone else.

"In any event," Kurama continued, "today's foremost goals are securing the last of the transplants and confirming the Unweaver's identity. The rest is secondary."

Yusuke thrust a fist toward the ceiling, pivoted on his back foot, and kicked out the other, his bare toes whizzing frighteningly close to her face. "Damn straight. By tonight, this endless time suck will be over. Then we'll catch this Unweaver bitch, and life will go back to normal." With impressive grace, he curled his leg back in and landed soft as a feather. "Can you believe I miss my ramen cart? Because, seriously, I do. Probably lost all my regulars at this rate. Gonna have to start all over—"

"The halfway house is more important than some stupid ramen, Urameshi."

Yusuke spun to the hallway, glaring daggers at Kuwabara. "Oh, yeah, Mr. I-bring-my-boring-ass-homework-on-every-freaking-trip?"

Kuwabara only shrugged, a yawn reinforcing the stormy gray exhaustion in his threads. "If I had to pick one, I'd focus on the halfway house any day."

As Kuwabara plodded for the kitchen, water droplets still glistening at the nape of his neck from his hasty shower, Michi asked, "How late did you end up staying awake?"

"Until four? Maybe?" Another yawn swept through him, his whole body trembling with it, and he aimed a sleepy smile her way before disappearing beyond the partition wall. "I think I'll ace this test, though."

Yusuke glowered. "I have the sinking suspicion you two are implying I should be manning my cart at the crack of dawn—but that's not happening."

Finishing off the last of her breakfast, Michi set aside her bowl and drew her knees to her chest. "Believe it or not, I wasn't implying anything. Wanting life to get back to normal is a feeling I'm totally on board with. We probably all are. I just don't want that at the expense of the transplants."

"Well, duh."

"What astounding wit you possess this morning," Kurama said dryly.

"Look, I'm not a morning person. You know this." Yusuke flung his arms wide. "All of Japan knows this."

Kuwabara emerged from the kitchen, a sloppily peeled orange in hand and an apple shoved in the front pocket of his baggy shorts. "That's the real reason he's excited to wrap up withdrawals. Needs his beauty sleep."

Grinning like a cat with a canary, Yusuke batted his eyelashes and swept a hand over his gelled hair. "I don't know how anyone expects me to keep a girl like Keiko around if I'm not gorgeous."

Kuwabara burst into laughter that nearly doubled him over, and even Kurama couldn't smother the flush of amused cobalt threading through his Loom. A smile tugging at his lips, he said, "Well, we've thoroughly and severely lost the plot, haven't we?"

A wee bit, yes.

But Yusuke's hijinks had been enough to take the sting out of her dismissal from today's extraction efforts, and with clearer vision, Michi recognized the merit in Genkai's decision, even if it wouldn't have been her first choice. "All I ask," she said after Kuwabara's chuckles died down to a mere rumble in his shoulders, "is that you're kind to the demons you pull today. Don't let Hiei spit anyone on his sword, alright?"

Yusuke snorted. "Yeah, I think we can manage that."

The Ties That Bind woven between the men twanged brightly as Kuwabara shrugged. "I mean, I'm not sure it's possible to keep Hiei from doing something once he sets his satanic little mind to it, but we can definitely give it a shot."

Kurama's hand found hers, his fingers meshing through her own. With a squeeze, he promised, "There will be no swords bloodied today, you have my word."

"Good. I'm holding you to that."

* * *

"It's her. That's the Unweaver."

Chikuma Nakasawa.

Forty-nine years old. Originally from Osaka but had moved to Mushiyori three years prior with her husband and young son, Hogai and Toshiki. A seamstress, of all things.

Her file—the third in Botan's stack of seven—lay open upon Genkai's kitchen table, a ream of facts spilling down its length, every miniscule detail of Chikuma's life printed in neat typeface. The twin brothers born two years after her who'd consumed her parents' attention. The exacting private school she'd attended in Osaka. The psychic powers that had manifested in her adolescence, but which she had never particularly fostered. The tailor's shop she'd first worked for and then owned, prior to her marriage. The business-savvy Hogai who'd swept in and married her and helped turn her tiny shop into a thriving success.

The son they'd had together. Toshiki.

The son they'd lost, and in doing so, lost each other, too.

The account of Toshiki's death spanned only two paragraphs, Spirit World's tiny, precise lettering rendering the story with heartbreaking brevity. A low-class demon named Ikku had slipped through Demon World's border patrol without registering with the halfway house and then taken up residence in an abandoned factory in Mushiyori's outskirts. Toshiki, merely seven years old, had been playing an imaginary game with friends, pretending they were spirit hunters, and in the midst of their wanderings, crossed into Ikku's haunt. The demon—frightened and bewildered by the strangeness of Human World—attacked, believing the children to be the psychics he'd overheard them imitating.

In short order, Toshiki was dead.

The fate of the other boys wasn't touched on in Chikuma's file, but the report did note that Ikku was immediately tried and found guilty of murdering a human—a conviction that earned him a prompt and non-negotiable death sentence at the hand of Spirit World's cruel justice system.

Shortly thereafter, Chikuma's marriage fell apart. In the divorce, she gave up her tailoring business and left the home she'd shared with her family. In a span of three months, she'd lost her child, her husband, and the work that had earned her living.

All gone.

Just like that.

"You're sure she's the one?" Genkai asked.

Tears pricking at her eyes, Michi flipped the file back to its cover page. A picture looked back at her from the top right corner. Chikuma. The Unweaver.

Or, at least, who she'd been _before_ becoming the Unweaver.

In the image, her roots hadn't grown out—or perhaps they hadn't yet silvered at all—and her hair remained a deep, lovely russet. Though the picture's details weren't exacting, there was a liveliness and warmth to Chikuma's eyes that Michi hadn't seen in the Unweaver's bloodshot, broken stare. Even back when this photo was taken, Chikuma had been more handsome than beautiful, but there was a welcoming kindness in the upturn of her lips that the Unweaver no longer possessed.

And yet, despite those minute differences, Michi possessed not even a sliver of doubt.

Chikuma Nakasawa was the Unweaver.

Glancing up at Genkai, Michi nodded. "I'm positive."

Genkai's sharp gaze swung to Kaito and Yana, crowded shoulder-to-shoulder with Michi around the table. "You two concur?"

Yana wavered, a shrug pushing up toward his ears. "I gotta be honest, I don't remember a whole bunch about what happened. It could be her, but I never really got a great look."

"Likewise," Kaito said. Behind his glasses' thick lenses, his dark eyes scanned the file's first page again, tracking over Chikuma's face repeatedly. "I might not have picked her out of a lineup, and eyewitness testimony is a notoriously flimsy science, but I've no reason to doubt Kuroki's assessment."

"Well that's good," Michi said, "considering there's nothing to doubt. That's her."

Seated beside Genkai across the table, Botan piped up. "I didn't want to say anything earlier that might've tipped the scales, but I, too, believe Chikuma fits the bill."

Genkai sipped from her mug of tea, the steam wafting around her haggard cheeks. "Elucidate us, Botan, before my patience wears thin."

"After an incident of this nature, Spirit World's general policy is corrective action to return a human's life to normalcy. In many cases, that manifests as memory modification." The ferry girl drew in a deep breath, forehead creasing as she frowned sadly at Chikuma's picture. "Exceptions are sometimes made if circumstances are extenuating. And in Chikuma's case… Well, she was a psychic—one particularly attuned to the connections of the worlds at that. Altering her knowledge surrounding Toshiki's death would've proved difficult. Furthermore, she begged to keep her memories, and ultimately, our officials acquiesced."

Just like that? They broke protocol so easily?

Michi's disbelief echoed in Genkai's threads, stark lime surprise and magenta disappointment hanging throughout her Loom. "A grieving, bereaved human was left to cope without tools? When will Spirit World's incompetence cease surprising me—"

"Hush," Botan said, flapping a hand. "Let me finish."

Genkai's lips pressed thin, but she said no more.

"Much as Human World has support systems for individuals undergoing trying times, Spirit World has constructed its own network—though it was previously used mostly to assist the transition to regular life for individuals who manifested territories or other unexpected powers. You know the ones, don't you?" Botan asked Genkai pointedly.

The old woman clucked her tongue. "Don't get flippant. On with it."

Glancing more broadly at Michi and the boys across the table, Botan clarified, "You all had a very built-in system, having found Genkai yourselves and become direct pupils. For those Genkai has not taken on as protégés, we've formed support groups in various cities. The decision not to erase Chikuma's memories was made on the condition that she attend one such group."

Asato scratched his head, perplexed. "Okay… But how's that tie into proving she's the Unweaver?"

It was Kaito, not Botan, who answered. "Because that group must be where she met the psychics she interfered with first, back in the fall." His dark gaze cut straight to Botan. "She knew of their powers through the meetings, and she chose them as her proving ground because she associated them with Spirit World and its perceived wrongdoings."

"Bingo," Botan said, though her usual verve was starkly lacking. "Or, well, that's my theory, anyway. It does make sense, though, and none of the other women whose records I found have the same connection."

A shiver crept through Michi. How horrid. Those psychics had been looking for comfort, for support and understanding—instead, they'd found a woman so lost in her own grief she'd turned into a monster. "Were all her early victims part of the group she was assigned to?"

"Yes. Every last one."

Yana slumped against the table, sagging as if Chikuma's horrid story had taken the wind out of him completely. "How do you think she found out about the halfway house transplants?"

"I have no idea," Botan admitted. "After she stopped attending her group, she dropped off Spirit World's radar. We haven't been able to get a bead on her since."

"So we know her name and her story, but that doesn't really get us anywhere, huh?" Asato sighed and heaved to his feet. "It's something, though. Right?"

Genkai stood slowly, and for perhaps the first time in all the years Michi had known her, she thought she spotted Genkai's true age in the creaking of her bones. "The boys have done more with less in the past."

"Yeah," Yana said, "but they've never really wrangled with a baddie like the Unweaver. I mean, she doesn't have world-ending capabilities, and we can't really sense the stuff she does with her energy. If she wanted to fade into the woodwork, we'd never find her."

"But she doesn't want that." Michi pushed back her chair and glanced over her shoulder. Watery rays spilled through the kitchen window, bright and wavering in the way that spring sunlight often was. "Until she's stopped or the transplants are gone, she's not disappearing anywhere."

Which was horrible for the demons who'd entrusted their lives to the halfway house's care.

But it also meant that once Kurama and the others brought in the final transplants today, the ticking clock that had hounded their team for weeks would at last go quiet. They'd still need to find the Unweaver, but her ability to hurt them—and the demons Michi had come to care so much about—would be all but eliminated.

Peace was oh-so-very close at hand.

"Can I see Taki?" she asked, meeting Genkai's stony gaze.

"Be my guest. But also be warned: there's not much to see."

Michi shot Asato a pointed look. "Yes, well, I'm aware that dearest Shade got you onboard with his try-to-weave-a-weakened-Loom theory, so I might as well try it, shouldn't I?"

Despite the mustard anxiety stained across Asato's Loom, he still couldn't clamp down on a wry grin. "Hey, you're stubborn. You trick other people because you act all sweet and nice, but I see right through you, Weaver. Sometimes I have to take matters into..."

He trailed off, silver flushing through his threads in tandem with red flooding into his cheeks.

"Sorry," he murmured instantly.

Yana leaned toward Kaito. He cupped a hand around his mouth, but it failed to muffle his whispered: "For what?"

No one answered.

 _Weaver_.

It had been nearly four months since Asato had used that nickname. Four months in which he'd done as she'd asked. Four months in which he'd let her pretend her territory wasn't what it was. And now, unintentional though it had been, here was a reminder of just how absurd that playact had been.

"It's fine, Shade." She knotted the hems of her sleeves inside her palms. "No apologies needed."

One sharp brow crept upward. "Seriously?"

"I haven't exactly earned the name yet, but it's the goal, isn't it?"

He furrowed his fingers through his hair. "More or less." With a forceful shrug and flash of navy determination, he straightened up, shoved his hands into pockets, and loped into the hall. "Come on, let's go visit Taki. Maybe his Loom will cough up some secrets."

* * *

"So where has everyone been sleeping?" Michi asked Asato as they slipped through the halls. "Genkai doesn't exactly have a hundred and ten rooms on hand."

He chuckled. "Well, that's the good thing about demons, isn't it? Most of 'em don't really care about beds and comfort and all that general 'human' nonsense." Tossing in exaggerated air quotes with one hand, he guided her to a window with the other. "See?"

The glass panes looked out on the shrine's rear gardens and the forest beyond. This stretch of lawn wasn't visible to someone approaching the shrine from its endless steps, and the temple's sloping roofs had obscured what sprawled beneath the afternoon sun, but as promised, the view answered her question—at least in part.

A tent camp of sorts had been constructed, a score or so makeshift shelters propped up by poles and lashed against trees. A trio of fire pits smoldered between the taut tarps, tendrils of dark smoke wafting toward the sky. Through the open flaps of one, Akemi emerged, the demon's hulking frame appearing like a circus act from the cramped space. Tossing his head back with a gargantuan yawn, he stretched his broad shoulders before hunching over a fire and stirring the dying coals to life.

As he warmed his hands over the flames, Michi scanned more of the woods, spotting figures roving through the dappled shadows. One perched in the branches of a tree. Another swept through a practice routine not unlike Yusuke's shadowboxing. A third and fourth emerged from the brush with game in hand.

Michi's stomach turned as one of them—a demon she recognized as Goro—dropped a deer carcass into the dirt, then flopped down beside it and dragged it into his lap, its head lolling. When he drew a knife, she turned away, her curiosity dimming.

"That's not a lot of tents."

Asato shrugged. "Trust me, if they need more shelter, they'll pull it together."

"Okay… But don't we _want_ them living—I don't know the word I want. More civilized? More like humans?"

"I think we kinda screwed our ability to ask that of them when we yanked them out of the homes we promised they'd have." He hooked his thumbs through his belt loops, rocking onto his heels. "Besides, why fight that battle when it was so hard to get most of them here in the first place? If their only condition to stay is that they live however they want, why force them inside?"

For their safety, primarily. But really, would that prove any safer than staying on its grounds? Probably not. At least, not for a demon.

"Point made," she said. "I guess my human sensibilities are getting in the way, but it seems so wrong to abandon them out there."

"I mean, to be clear, rooms were offered. A few have taken us up on it."

"Oh?"

"Matsu, for one. Not sure about the others."

Michi smiled softly. That sounded like the Matsu she knew, which was a small relief, some tiny measure of proof that the demons who'd been brought here remained safe from the Unweaver's manipulations. If they were still acting as themselves, perhaps their threads remained unaltered—perhaps their lives hadn't been uprooted for nothing.

"Ready for Taki?" Asato asked after a beat of quiet.

As best as she could be.

Or, more accurately, she was prepared to see _Taki_. What she had to brace herself for was the corrupted, nearly cleaved version of him that had become his new normal. Well, that, and the notion of weaving his Loom back together.

Nevertheless, she nodded. "Of course."

Asato seemed to aim for a smile, but the tight press of his lips did little to ease the riotous nerves in Michi's gut as they traipsed the last dozen feet to Taki's room. A lock remained on the door, and as Asato fumbled it open, strands of mustard anxiety trailed over his knuckles.

Before he could slide the door back on its runner, Michi pressed a hand to the wood, stilling him. "Is he worse?"

Asato hesitated.

"Be honest," Michi whispered.

"He's not… better."

"Shade."

Sighing, he shrugged helplessly. "I don't know what you want me to say, Meech. He's been practically comatose for weeks. But you know that. You've seen him this way. As for his Loom… only you'll be able to know if it's better or worse or totally unchanged."

Only her.

Goodness, she wished they'd stop putting that weight on her.

But she didn't say that.

"Right." Drawing a final bolstering breath into her lungs, she pulled back the door. "Then here we go."

Inside, Taki's room was dark, the lights out and the curtains cinched together over his window. As he had been the last time she'd seen him, his hulking form lay curled on his bed, massive shoulders rising and falling with each steady breath. His stoneskin encased him in crags and pebbled ruts, armor that could protect his flesh, but not his soul.

In all those superficial ways, he was unchanged. On the surface, at the level Genkai or Asato might see, he was no worse or better than before—but Asato had been right. Michi saw what they could not.

Threads not just bone white but nearly translucent.

A core so leeched of color she couldn't differentiate it from the threads around it.

A Loom as brittle and thin as spun glass.

Chilling sadness seeped through her, and she pressed her fingers to her lips numbly. "Oh, Taki…"

Asato winced, then wrapped an arm around her shoulders in meager support. "That bad?"

For a moment, she leaned into him, his proximity bolstering her, reminding her that she wasn't alone—that Taki wasn't alone. "I don't know how much longer he'll last like this. His threads aren't broken, but they're not exactly threads anymore either." Easing out of Asato's embrace, she knelt carefully beside Taki's futon and curled a hand over his where it lay knotted in the sheets.

"Think you can do something about it?"

"Honestly?"

He sighed and stepped closer. "Never mind. Don't answer."

"It's just… Shade, this is so beyond me. If you could see it, you'd understand. One wrong move, and I think he'll shatter into pieces. I can't be the person who does that to him." She glanced sidelong at Asato, finding his gaze through the gloomy darkness.

"It might happen either way, Meech." He rubbed his brow, fingers pinching together over the ridge of his nose. "If we don't fix him, he might just wither away. I mean, he's barely eating. He almost never leaves this one spot. That's not a life."

True.

But if she tried—and failed—to heal his Loom and he cleaved as a result, there'd be no fixing him. Not ever.

If he remained as he was now, a mere shade of his former self, at least some semblance of hope stayed alive, too. If his Loom held together, no matter how fragile it might be, opportunity lived. Who existed capable of seizing that opportunity, she had no idea. But at least the option remained open.

Asato must've sensed her hesitation, and he backed off, retreating toward the door. "Maybe just unfurl your territory. See if that shows you anything new. If you're not ready for more, so be it."

With a deep breath through her nose, Michi obeyed, her awareness spreading beyond herself in a burgeoning wave, lapping outward to the far reaches of the room. At once, the threads around her clarified, Asato's Loom snapping into focus even outside her proper sightlines. Muddled yellows. Sharp greens. Nerves and fear and unease twining into a bog of discomfort.

In contrast, Taki's Loom seemed all the more colorless.

So white.

So lifeless.

And then she saw it—a thread whole one second and shorn clearly in two the next.

Not raveling. Not tightening. Not slowly twining in on itself until the tension snapped it in half. No. This was not that.

This was a thread properly cleaved. The way Ryota had been.

Without thinking, she threw herself forward, hands grasping at Taki's, shaking them wildly as she sought to draw him back to her. "Taki! Taki, wake up!"

"Michi?"

She whirled, seeking Asato at the door, framed in the light spilling in from the hall, nothing more than a darkened silhouette. Then her gaze roved to the walls all around—and to the dozen wards plastered across them. All those psychic seals meant to protect Taki. A task they'd managed successfully for weeks. Yet one they'd suddenly begun to fail at.

Why?

Asato shifted, one foot rising as he teetered, debating drawing closer, and then she spotted it behind his right shoulder—a seal barely visible where the door peeked from the wall, still pushed back on its runner.

She lurched to her feet. "Close the door, Shade. Quickly."

To his credit, he reacted instantly, scrambling for the handle and yanking the paneling shut. At once, the room plunged into darkness, and though she could make out nothing of Asato's features, she saw his Loom as clearly as if it were burned across her retinas forever.

It was dyed forest green, every last thread of it, every last whorl and knot and loop, all colored in fear as stark as the terror fueling her racing heart.

But as she twisted back to Taki, the vice around her heart ceased tightening.

He wasn't cleaving anymore. At least for the moment, his threads held firm. And again, that begged the question: why?

"Taki was cleaving," she said, surprised at the steadiness in her voice, "but it's stopped."

"Because I closed the door?"

"By extension, yeah." She pointed to the ward pinned to the paneling. "There was a gap in the seals while the door was open. Closing it completed the ring." As soon as the words left her mouth, a stone of icy understanding sank into her gut, spiraling down, down, down in a spiral of crushing reality. "Which shouldn't matter. Not with the ward encirclement Genkai reinforced out in the forest. These were just precautionary."

"Weaver, what are you saying?"

Grabbing his elbow, she tugged him toward the door, but paused with her hand on the panel, standing there—in the safety of all those seals—for one final breath. Then, with forced steel in her voice, she announced the truth.

"If these seals are the only thing protecting Taki, then the outer ring has failed."

"How is that possible?"

"Because it's been breached."

* * *

AN: Welcome to the end game, my friends.

Based on my current trajectory, it looks like this fic is going to wrap up in Ch. 41. Which is bananas. Like... whoa. I cannot believe the end is nearly here. By a vast margin, this is the longest story I've ever written. Not just in terms of fanfic, but in my novel writing as well. I'm simultaneously excited for that ending to arrive and a little gobsmacked that we're nearly there already.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We have some big stuff ahead of us. The ride's not over!

Ginormous thanks to last week's reviewers. It seems FFnet is still up to its nonsense because someone let me know they haven't received alerts in weeks. _Sigh._ Makes it all the more sweet when I do hear from one of you lovelies! Thank you: MissIdeophobia, Beccalittlebear, ahyeon, roseeyes, Laina Inverse, ThatOneGirl, Shell1331, xXGemini14Xx, Guest, and gloss my eyes!


	38. Ivory Invasion

Michi and Asato moved fast, yanking open Taki's door, darting into the hall, and shoving it shut behind them, sealing the demon within his protective ring of wards.

"You think the Unweaver's here? Somewhere in the compound?" Asato asked, his cheeks paling as he bolted for a window and squinted at the demon encampment beyond the glass. "How would she have found us?"

Michi shook her head, then wished she hadn't as the world spun, her drumming pulse roaring in her ears. Splaying a palm against the wall, she fought for calm. Panic would get them nowhere good, and judging by the forest green lashing through Asato's Loom, he couldn't be counted on as their steadying force.

"I don't know how," Michi said, "but she must have. Maybe Spirit World told her about this place when they put her in that help group. Maybe she traced our Looms. There's no way to be sure, but it doesn't matter. If she's already here, there's no time to care about any of that."

"Right. Of course, you're right." With a jerky nod, Asato straightened. "I'll tell Genkai. You call Kurama, yeah?"

If she could get signal, sure. But the connection was always spotty out here. She'd have a better chance at getting out a text than a proper call. Still worth a shot, though.

"I'll try. What's our plan in the meantime? Should I start calling the transplants in or what?"

He rolled his shoulders up toward his ears, more lost and helpless than she'd ever seen him. "Genkai will know." He started down the hall, legs churning into a sprint. "Come on. We shouldn't split up."

Michi didn't follow. "I think I should stay. Someone needs to keep an eye on the transplants. If the Unweaver—"

With her territory still extended, she sensed it the moment it happened—the instant the first Loom cleaved. Not Asato's up ahead. But one somewhere behind her. In a room beyond Taki's.

One second, it had been lit with gentle aquamarine, calm as a secluded lagoon, and the next, the threads bunched tight, as if gathered in a clenched fist, before falling to pieces, shorn clear in two—ceasing to exist in the heartbeats that followed. In answer, Michi's breath guttered like she'd been kicked in the chest, her lungs crushed beneath the weight of those fading threads

She knew that Loom. Without an iota of doubt.

It had been Matsu's. Sweet, mild-mannered Matsu's.

The apparition had been as serene as any Michi had ever met, as even-keeled and kind-hearted as Yukina, but she was something else, too—something forged from black ink and deadly power, so dangerous she'd been deemed their number one extraction priority. Hers had been the first apartment Michi had visited. Hers had been the first Human World life turned on its head. Thanks to the tattoos mottling her forearms, she'd been labeled a veritable killing machine.

And now she was cleaved.

Ruined.

 _Gone_.

Worse still, she wasn't alone.

Outside, past the edges of Michi's territory but not beyond the reach of her awareness, another Loom fell to tatters. Then another. And another.

Fast. Too fast.

"Shade, get Genkai! Now!"

At the far end of the hall, he wavered, his cheeks gone ruddy rather than pale. He could sense it, probably—all those cleaving Looms—and if he felt even a mere fraction of what she did, it was likely just a matter of will keeping his breakfast from splattering across the floorboards. The horror of that sweeping wrongness clawed at her, sinking tethers beneath her flesh, and she writhed inside her own skin, desperate to escape it—and utterly sure there'd be no escaping.

Gritting his teeth, he started back for her. "Don't you dare do what I think you're doing."

But he was too late, she'd already turned heel, racing for the closest door and whipping over the threshold onto the veranda. There was no time to find Genkai together, no time to play it safe, no time to call Kurama and wait for him to come rescue her.

The Unweaver was here, and she'd snared her wicked fingers through too many Looms to count. Left alone, she'd destroy everything Genkai had worked for, everything the halfway house had built—everyone Michi had come to love.

To sate her own grief, Chikuma Nakasawa would tear the Loom of Life to pieces.

But not if Michi could stop her.

Not if Michi got there first.

Asato's shout warbled down the hall, but she didn't turn back for him, pausing only long enough to call over her shoulder, "Go to Genkai, Shade. Now. The sooner you find her, the sooner you can help me."

Realistically, Genkai probably didn't need to be found. No doubt she sensed the Unweaver's workings, too. Genkai was too attuned to the world not to feel something so pivotally wrong with it, but she might not have pieced together what Michi already had—that their haven had been infiltrated.

"Go!" she shouted one final time, and then she leapt from the porch and raced for the trees, shoving her territory ever outward, farther than she'd ever extended it. Out into the brambles. Across the lawn. Back toward the shrine. A widening bubble, expanding and expanding, until her other senses fell away beneath the onslaught of colors and threads, of Looms and lives, of beings—and unbeings.

Because that's what the cleaved demons were.

Shells of themselves. Little more than husks. Voids amongst the tapestry of the world. Empty, colorless space. A vacuum where once there'd been beauty.

There had to be a half dozen now, mostly concentrated in the cluster of tents, and Michi steered clear of them, roving away, into the forest.

More Looms lay ahead. Familiar ones whose cores she could place. Saburo, Etsu, and Umeko. Demons she'd brought here for safety. Demons she'd promised—oh, how ardently she'd _promised_ —their time at the shrine would be a temporary disturbance. Nothing more. She'd assured them leaving their homes would keep them free of the Unweaver's clutches, not deliver them to her.

Instead, they'd gathered here like a herd to the slaughter.

Clenching her hands into fists so tight her nails carved crescents into her palms, Michi sorted past those Looms. It wasn't the familiar she wanted. The Loom she was after was one she didn't know. Not one bright with color. Nor one gone ashen and brittle.

No, the Loom she sought was slippery. Slick. Coated in oil. Here and gone too quickly to remembered. Impossible to look straight at, and yet impossible to miss.

The Unweaver's Loom.

It was somewhere out here, and though Michi hadn't formulated a plan for once she found it, that's where she had to start. She couldn't out-weave the Unweaver. Not yet. Likely not ever. But maybe she didn't need to.

Maybe there were other ways to win.

* * *

Yet again, Michi braved Genkai's compound barefoot and jacket-free, but unlike months ago, when she'd been knee deep in snow, desperately pleading with Taki to come back off a cliff, no slush coated the underbrush now, and the chilling wind nipped not with winter's ferocious sting but with spring's tenacious kiss. Nevertheless, the soles of her feet took a beating as she pressed onward, broken sticks stabbing between her toes and sharp rocks cutting at her heels as branches snagged her hair.

She ignored it all, funneling the pain away, down into some deep, unfathomable hole, never to be found again. Discomfort couldn't be allowed to slow her.

She wouldn't let it.

Acting on memory alone, she forged a path out to a rough halfway point between the shrine and the circle of wards hung in the trees. Then she swung north, trying—as best as her meager sense of direction allowed—to maintain a curved path around the shrine. A loop encompassing the temple seemed her best chance at finding the Unweaver quickly, but it proved harder than she'd hoped.

There were too many cleaved.

The apparitions were everywhere. Upwards of a dozen, maybe. They tottered through the trees like zombies who'd escaped a movie set, their movements erratic but avoidable. Reliably the blots of emptiness where their Looms had once been crashed against the edges of her territory long before she saw them, giving her warning to adjust her course.

She wouldn't risk an encounter with one. Not now that they weren't her transplants anymore—now that they weren't _anyone_ anymore. Not in light of the destruction they could wreak.

She knew too well what Oharu had done just days prior. She'd seen the atrocities Ryota had committed. She'd witnessed the aftermath of Dai's unraveling, even all these months later, the damage he'd wrought never to be fully healed.

If she crossed paths with a cleaved demon, she doubted she'd escape.

So there could be no crossed paths—no chances to die.

She had to play it safe.

As a result, her route rambled between the trees, zagging west to avoid one demon, then east to avoid two more. She didn't dare run, not with how loud she'd be, but walking was no quiet feat either. Every snapped twig froze her in place. Every creaking branch set her heart skittering.

Through it all, no oil-slick Loom emerged.

White threads lashed against her senses, overwhelming and inescapable, and pine green fear snaked between the barely budding trees, tangled up with mustard apprehension bleeding out from the shrine, but there was no hint of the Unweaver, no clue to lead Michi on. The aftereffects of her meddling were everywhere, but the cause—the Unweaver herself—was nowhere to be found.

As a branch yanked threads from her shirt for the hundredth time and she stumbled to a standstill while she fought her way free, uncertainty settled like a world-heavy mantle atop her shoulders. Coming out here alone might've been the wrong choice. It had felt right as Matsu's Loom had gone to pieces, but maybe it hadn't been. Maybe she should've waited for Asato to return, for Genkai to bark orders—for the psychics with proper experience to take charge. She'd been so panic stricken, so utterly and unwaveringly sure that if she didn't find the Unweaver immediately, they'd lose every transplant left to them, but that had been stupid—and now she was useless, searching woods riddled with fiends who'd happily see her dead.

At last free of the grasping twigs, she turned east, in the direction she sensed the tangled knot of Looms that represented the shrine. Time to go back, to admit she'd wasted however long she'd been out here and wait for direction—

The buzzing in her pocket nearly scared her into a bush.

Her cell had signal? All the way out here?

Pressing a hand to her breastbone to keep her heart from beating free of her chest, she fished out her phone and swiped it open. "Kurama?"

He wasted no time with introductions, his voice tight, tone kept carefully flat. "Michi, where are you?"

"Genkai's. The Unweaver—"

"Is there. I'm aware. Botan contacted us, and we're already on our way." His next words fell like pointed stones. "I meant where specifically. Kido informed us you'd left the shrine."

Stopping into the shadow of a massive tree, Michi eased back against the bark and stared into the dappled shadows ahead, her territory stretched to its limits. "I'm in the woods. I thought I could find her."

"Alone? Michi—"

She cut in, interrupting him as firmly as he had her. "Don't. I know it was risky, and it hasn't panned out like I'd hoped, but I'm already out here. What's done is done."

A short—bitter—laugh answered. "Pardon my frayed nerves. Given the circumstances, I'd imagine you can at least find them understandable."

"Kurama, stop. Please." Hearing him so unsettled, so undeniably afraid, did little to ease the rioting electricity jumping in her pulse, but giving in to his panic would only serve to loosen the last vestiges of her control, and she couldn't have that—not with the cleaved roving the forest. "It may not be fair, but I need you to pretend it's not me you're talking to. React like I was Yusuke or Hiei or Kuwabara. Treat me like your team. Not like… me."

His next laugh was the merest degree lighter, as if she'd startled it from him before he could infuse it with his disquiet. "Pretend you are _not_ my girlfriend, you mean."

She strained for levity as a branch cracked in the distance. "A little on the nose, don't you think?"

Twisting around the tree trunk, she spotted movement twenty yards away—a transplant rambling through a thicket. Huge, broad shoulders. Wider even than Taki's. A frame so tall, he dwarfed all others Michi had ever met. Though his back was turned, she knew him instantly.

Akemi.

No Loom hung around him, not so much as a stitch of color attached to his soul. He seemed unaware of her, and soon his path cut away, off on a tangent no one would take intentionally, straight through a thorny patch of undergrowth.

As his back retreated, she whispered, "How long until you're here?"

"Forty minutes, give or take. Hiei will arrive first."

"Because he's fastest," she said, the words slipping out without intention. Her mind was whirling too quickly to be followed, thoughts breaking and connecting and reforming in a blistering vortex. "We don't have that long."

"It's the best we can do." Wind whistled in the speaker, crackling against her ear, nearly drowning out his ragged exhale. "In the meantime, you need to get back to the others. Genkai can protect you."

"You're too far. We can't wait for you."

"Michi, think about what you're saying."

Abandoning her hiding spot, she struck out after Akemi. Every footstep felt like a risk, like some taunt begging him to turn around and shred her to pieces, but she moved carefully, avoiding branches wherever she could, taking advantage of the crushed path through the brambles he'd left behind.

Ignoring the fierce drumming of her heart, she murmured to Kurama, "Would you tell Hiei to run back to Genkai with his tail between his legs?"

He answered with world weary exasperation. "Can you summon a dragon from the deepest pits of Demon World using nothing but your arm and an unhealthily problematic dose of obstinacy?"

She rolled her eyes. "I don't have any idea what that means, but considering fancy powers are irrelevant against the Unweaver, it doesn't exactly matter."

What did matter was what she'd realized—the pattern that had only just clicked into recognizable form.

The cleaved transplants weren't doddering in nonsensical loops. Over and over, nearly a dozen times now, when one had crossed her path, they'd ultimately veered off, and each time, they'd headed in the same direction—the same way Michi herself was headed. North and slightly east. But unlike her, she suspected they weren't going to continue in a circle. They had a destination.

A point that was calling them.

And now, a point that was calling Michi, too.

As she ducked beneath a branch, Akemi's broad back crept into view, just for a second, just long enough to know she hadn't lost him—that she was on the right trail—and quickening her pace, she said, "I figured out how to find the Unweaver. I'm going to do what I can to slow her down. The quicker you're here, the quicker you can take over, but I have to do this."

"Michi—"

She didn't wait for his rebuttal. "I love you, Kurama. Get here soon."

And then she hung up.

* * *

Michi had a question.

Or, really, a thousand questions. A hundred million burning, unrelenting, inescapable questions.

But one in particular drowned out all the rest, one that echoed in her every thudding step as she trailed Akemi through the trees, north at first, but perpetually more and more to the west. He'd headed eastward originally but eventually peeled back to the left, and as Michi gave chase, the same question circled. Over and over.

If the transplants had been cleaved, how was the Unweaver dictating their movements?

Why were they headed to one place? Why not off into the forest to wander forever lost? Or, alternatively, why hadn't they spiraled into the destructive tendencies of their previously cleaved peers?

The farther she followed that latter line of inquiry, the more questions sprung up. Because the cleaved transplants hadn't been the truly destructive ones, had they? Ryota had attacked her, yes, but the murders he'd committed had occurred prior to his Loom's unraveling. She'd never seen Dai or Oharu in person, so she'd never confirmed the status of their Looms, but the ex-Spirit Detectives had been sure of one thing each time: the demons had used their powers when they'd turned violent.

But cleaved demons?

They didn't have energy—none that could be sensed by the boys, at least.

Logically, then, Dai and Oharu couldn't have been cleaved. Not completely. Not in the beginning.

Which brought her back to Akemi thundering through the forest on a brutally unrelenting path, barreling through thorny, impassable thickets, paying no heed to the injuries scoured across his flesh by grasping brambles. This was not the route of a man in possession of his own thoughts; rather, it was the journey of someone dragged ahead on taut marionette strings, controlled by a puppeteer on the far end of silken rope.

As if he hadn't truly cleaved.

As if a piece of Akemi remained, so thin and fragile and bled of color as to be rendered invisible to Michi's awareness. But not gone. Not forever ruined.

If that was true, it was both a boon and a curse. A boon for the opportunity it offered, the chance—no matter how infinitesimally small—that the transplants' Looms could be woven whole, but a curse thanks to the threat they still represented. With their energy intact, they weren't mere beasts hunting prey. Instead, the cleaved apparitions were impossible monsters, armed with talents not of this world.

She couldn't hope to best any of them, and if the Unweaver turned them against her, Michi wouldn't stand a chance.

Gnawing on her bottom lip, she wove around a dense growth of shrubs Akemi had plowed straight through with abandon. On the far side, she ground to a halt.

Akemi was no longer alone.

Two more demons had fallen into step with him. Matsu to his left. Nishi behind them both. Both female demons were seemingly stripped of their Looms, and though Matsu's state was no surprise, the void of space around Nishi stood in stark contrast to the last time Michi had seen her, when the demon's Loom had been as viciously white and brittle as Taki's had managed at its very worst.

Now it was gone, just like all the others.

Except, if Michi had guessed right, their Looms weren't completely destroyed. Obscured beyond their bodies, maybe. Or shorn so thin Michi could no longer see what remained. But not actually gone.

In her mind, she saw the Unweaver's workings like a cable stretched from the transplants stomachs, yanking them onward through the forest, the rest of their threads cut away like extraneous frays.

That cable led the demons on, and in turn, Michi followed. The terrain roughened as they continued north, heading up the foothills of the mountains that grew from this forest, and though they never passed beyond the shrine's ring of wards, Michi couldn't imagine they were far off. This was ground she'd never walked in her months at the shrine. It was rough, unforgiving land—a piece of nature that wanted no more wanted a part of her than she did of it.

Nonetheless, she carried on, hiking over exposed stone and fording streams only now beginning to thaw from winter. Exhaustion burned in her muscles, and her bare feet ached from chill and stony abuse, but she didn't fall behind.

On and on they went, ten minutes blending into thirty, discernible only by the occasional glance at Michi's phone screen. Slowly, the demons' ranks swelled. To seven. Then twelve. Then nineteen.

So many transplants lost.

So many friends she'd failed.

And then, at long last, the journey ended.

There was no clearing to welcome them, no opening between the trees for the demons to gather in. Had they not stopped abruptly, bunching up against a fallen tree trunk, Michi wouldn't have realized their trip was even over. It was a thicket so unceremonious, so like the rest of the forest around it, that Michi never would've imagined it to be their destination—yet that's precisely what it seemed to be.

The transplants milled, snarling at one another like caged beasts. Breathless, Michi hunkered, hoping to keep out of sight until she worked out why this place had been their end goal. Hardly daring to let the demons out of her sight, she craned to see beyond them, half-expecting to discover the Unweaver standing proud amongst the trees.

But proud wasn't Chikuma Nakasawa's modus operandi, and Michi spotted nothing waiting in the dappled sunlight.

So why here?

What was the Unweaver working toward—

The shriek rent through the rustling quiet of the woods. For nearly forty minutes, Michi had heard nothing more than crunching footsteps and animalist grunts, warning growls and snapping twigs. She'd been following a wolf pack trapped upon taut leashes, and now—at last— a beast had snapped.

Matsu. Lashing out at Akemi.

He must have bumped her or crowded into her space, and the demon struck back, fierce as a leaping tiger. Her tattoos, black as midnight, writhed across her arms, and like ink spilling into water, they diffused through the air, snaking around Akemi's limbs and seeping beneath his clothes.

The massive demon bellowed, his body convulsing. Pain warred with rage as his voice broke on an endless scream.

For one strenuous breath, the whole world narrowed down to his agony, to the first hurt in years that Michi couldn't witness as chartreuse threads stretched through a virulent Loom, but as air found its way to her lungs, the stillness shattered and the knot of stagnant demons imploded, the transplants turning upon one another like a detonated bomb.

Attacks she couldn't properly see tore through the forest. In a whirlwind of hooked claws and thrown fists, the demons fell upon each other. As weapons found purchase, the coppery tang of blood mixed with the loamy scent of the disturbed undergrowth, and the first bodies fell, lost beneath trampling feet.

 _No_.

No, not like this.

The Unweaver would not win like this.

Michi's pulse roared everywhere, battering against her veins like mallets beating a drum, driving at her capillaries and joints and heart as if her blood sought freedom. Beneath that crush of adrenaline, fear fell away, crumpling away to dust as she scrambled from hiding.

"Matsu! Akemi! Nishi!" A dozen names sprung to her tongue, rolling forth like the rapid-fire pop of a gun. She named them all, even those once assigned to Yana. She knew each one, thanks to manila folders and Hiei's terse reports if not memories of their Looms.

With each new name, the demons slowed, attacks ceasing as they turned, one by one, to level her with unseeing eyes. No recognition sparked in their faces, no warmth or history flooded back to them, but they'd stopped fighting—and that was something.

Wasn't it?

They stood rooted in place, as motionless as the trees, stirring little more than empty branches in the breeze, and in the space between them, she sensed nothing but void—nothing but the emptiness of a dimension meant to hold shining threads and bright emotion. In front of them, however, she glimpsed faded white, filaments so thin as to be nearly translucent, but filaments nonetheless.

Filaments.

Or threads.

Which meant Looms, not intact per se, but still in existence.

Hardly daring to breathe, she followed the line of those gossamer strings. They stretched out from the transplants' chests, toward Michi and then past her, and as she turned, tracking the threads spun like spiders' silk, she braced herself for what she'd find.

For _who_ she'd find.

And there she was. Hair half-dyed. Eyes red and haggard. Nails bloodied by fingers that never ceased picking.

The Unweaver.

Chikuma Nakasawa.

"Hello, girl."

Michi stepped clear of the tree where she'd hunkered, slipping into the light and lofting her chin high even as a jittery shake took root in her fingertips and fizzed up her hands, through her wrists, down her arms, all the way to her chest, where it settled like a firecracker behind her breastbone. Days ago, she'd felt this woman's thrall. She knew its ache and tug and oily, slithering touch. She knew what it was to find her own thoughts scattered before the Unweaver's prying fingers.

That sensation might come again.

If it did, Michi had to be ready.

And readiness started now—with the first and only weapon the might pierce past the Unweaver's defenses.

Simple. To the point.

"I'm sorry," Michi said, "for what happened to your son."

* * *

AN: Eep! Here we are. The culmination of everything so far. This chapter (and the next) took me longer than my usual to write because I want to execute everything just right. With any luck, I'm off to a good start with this one!

Heaps of thanks to the wonderful reviewers who grace my inbox this week! Big, mighty Internet hugs to: Laina Inverse, knightsqueen05, Sidako, MissIdeophobia, Beccalittlebear, Shell1331, ThatOneGirl, and roseeyes!


	39. From the Black

The wind moaned.

It didn't whistle or howl or sigh. Nor did the lonely, bereft branches of the forest creak or whine. In fact, there was no sound at all, not even the whisper of Michi's own breathing, but for the wail of the breeze. Gusts of it swirled around Michi's calves and clutched clammy at her bare arms, wrapping her in its mewling cry, and fifteen feet away, Chikuma Nakasawa stood still as crumbled marble, motionless but for the shawl slipping from her shoulders, tugged loose by the grieving fingers of the wind.

"I'm sorry," Michi said again. "But losing Toshiki… that doesn't grant you license to kill others, to ruin the lives of people who have never harmed your own." Squaring her shoulders, she eased forward another step. "I can't imagine your pain, but I can imagine theirs, too—"

A twig snapped, cutting her off just as she'd turned, a hand unfurling to encompass the cleaved demons who'd formed their audience—an audience that had once stood motionless, but no longer.

Umeko moved first, slinking forward on clumsy feet. His head angled toward Michi, but his eyes were unseeing, nothing but glassy windows to an empty soul.

Then others followed. Matsu, her tattoos still rising like smoke from her arms. Habiki, blood dripping from a wound slashed open across his cheek. Naoki, limping on a knee bent in an angle no limb should ever achieve.

Michi's heart lodged in her throat as she swiveled back to the Unweaver. The woman held her hands extended before her, fingers tangled in a half-collapsed skein of thread, but where those fingers had once been spread wide, dancing through the strings as they wove their chaos, they'd now buckled into fists. From the Unweaver's clenched knuckles, gray yarn spilled downward, tumbling to the forest floor in a fall of charcoal.

"Don't you dare speak his name," the Unweaver warned, her words spitting forth like shards of broken glass.

Michi swallowed roughly but held onto control with an iron grip, her voice steady and unwavering. "Someone has to, and you've made clear it won't be you. You'd rather drown yourself in anger. You'd rather hurt people who don't deserve it. And for what? Not for your son." She thrust a hand toward the encroaching demons, willing it not to tremble with all her might. "What child would want this? Toshiki—"

"Stop it!"

For the first time since appearing, the Unweaver moved.

She lurched forward, one knee smashing into a broken stump, her shoulder thwacking against a low hanging branch, but if the pain of those collisions registered, it didn't show in her face or beneath the oiled surface of her Loom. In those evasive threads, Michi found not the chartreuse of hurt but the seething black of rage.

Pure, unfiltered anger.

Hatred so burning and dark it scorched past even the fog that usually ensconced the Unweaver's threads, searing against Michi's sight like a heated brand.

Anger at Michi?

Or at the past?

Hard to say. But either way, it gave Michi something to work with, some semblance of purchase, some small sliver of understanding—not because of the Unweaver's blackened Loom, but because of what _else_ Michi noticed.

For weeks, Kurama had reiterated the same mantra. He'd insisted, at every turn, that Michi possessed a unique skill. Empathy. The ability to connect. Not thanks to her territory. Not thanks to psychic talent. But because that's who she was. Someone who cared about others—who wanted to help others.

So what did it matter if she couldn't grasp the Unweaver's Loom? Seeing those colored threads was a tool, yes. An advantage to be gained and manipulated and utilized. But it wasn't Michi's _only_ tool.

The Unweaver's rage was a starting point. The anger she'd allowed to consume her had laid claim to her Loom as soon as Michi had uttered Toshiki's name, but if Michi looked past it, if she ignored the Unweaver's ephemeral threads in favor of what she could see with her true senses, the rest of the story laid itself bare.

Grief lived in the sharp grooves of her wrinkles and in the bloodshot stains across her eyes. Exhaustion hunkered in her bent shoulders and lowered chin. Detachment shone in the ragged dye job fading from her hair.

Under thorny, hatred-plated armor, the specter of Chikuma Nakasawa still lingered—faded, but surely not impossible to reach.

"I'm sorry he's gone," Michi said as the Unweaver slowed once more to a standstill, "but you don't understand the halfway house or what it's striving for. Our transplants don't hurt people. They've come to this world for better lives, to escape their own grief and pain, to escape a world that is cruel and cold in a way I'm not sure humans like us can ever properly understand. Hurting these demons… it doesn't avenge Toshiki. And it won't stop more deaths like his. Please, Chikuma, listen—"

A hand clamped around Michi's right wrist, firm as a steel shackle, and she didn't need to follow the brawny arm upward to know that Akemi had seized her. No one else possessed a hand so massive nor strength so unwavering. And even as his fingers clenched tighter, her bones creaking under his crushing grip, Michi didn't falter. She made no move to run, no attempt to yank free.

Nor did she plead with Akemi.

He was lost to her, his ears and heart and mind as faded as the remains of his Loom, little more than fractional ghosts of what they'd once been.

So she kept her gaze on Chikuma.

And she kept talking.

"I used to think demons were different, too," she said. "Not dangerous, necessarily, but otherworldly, so unlike humans that it would be impossible to ever truly know them. I'd only agreed to help settle transplants here in Human World because I owed a debt to Genkai, the owner of this shrine." She spread her hands wide, though the gesture seemed lost on Chikuma and her unchanging mask of hatred. "But I told myself it was just a debt repayment. I told myself these apparitions weren't like me—that someday, I would wash my hands of them and their world.

"I won't call those statements lies, because back then, I thought them true. But they were wrong. The demons I transplanted here aren't any different from you or me. They're people, with lives and culture and family. _Family_ , Chikuma. Like Toshiki. Children and parents and siblings who would mourn them if they were lost."

Akemi's vice-like grip sent spikes of pain up Michi's forearm, her bones and nerves and muscles aching in silent protest, but it wasn't until the next hand wrapped around her left elbow that Michi wavered.

From the corner of her eye, she watched black smoke spiral around her bicep, creeping toward her collarbone and chin. There was no pain to its touch. Truthfully, there was no sense of contact at all. No heat. No pressure. No sensation of movement. But it was there all the same, spreading from Matsu's tattoos and writhing around Michi in an ever-growing cloud.

Matsu had been extraction priority number one. The largest threat of any demon transplant in the country. All thanks to these tattoos—to the smoke billowing into Michi's lungs and whatever mysterious power it possessed.

It didn't matter.

It _couldn't_ matter.

With every fiber of the stubborn will she shared with Asato, Michi refused to follow that thought to its end.

She would not fear Matsu.

She would not fear her friend.

"Chikuma Nakasawa," Michi said, "meet Matsu. Matsu, meet Chikuma." Pointless words considering no trace of Matsu remained within the shell of her body, but an introduction that needed to be made regardless. The Unweaver had spent months thinking of her victims as faceless monsters, so if Michi was going to sway her to see them for what they truly were, a chain had to be forged between them.

First, a link connecting Chikuma and Matsu.

Gathering her nerve, Michi spun a new tale, one infused with details she'd hoped could've remained buried in Matsu's past for all time but now had to be laid bare. "Matsu came to Human World to save her life. In Demon World, she'd been enslaved, held captive by a man who abused her. Before the halfway house offered her sanctuary, she believed her only way out was death—and she would've welcomed it had no we not offered her an alternative. Instead, she came here. She found a second chance."

Second, a link to Akemi.

With a tilt of her head, Michi indicated the burly demon. Over a year ago, when she'd first placed Akemi in his home, his Loom had told a story of broken distrust, unwarranted regret, and a beautifully stubborn refusal to break; now, it was little more than cobweb silk, bleached of its color. "Chikuma, meet Akemi. Akemi, Chikuma. On the demon plane, he grew up forced to fight battles that weren't his. Used for his strength and his power—his heart irrelevant. A life in our world offered him an opportunity to be more than an indentured mercenary, and he's done nothing to endanger that venture."

Turning her head until other demons swam into her peripheral, she kept going, narrating nineteen lives, once riddled with pain, but happy now. Content.

Or so they had been.

Until Chikuma began her weaving.

Link after link, she welded a chain. Driving home the core of who her demons were with every fresh word. Survivors. Victims. People like Chikuma, who'd have given anything for a fresh start. Their world of origin might have differed from hers and their bodies might run on energy and power rather than hearts and blood, but they were still just people—just living beings, their existence as fragile and tenuous and born of luck as any human's.

Ready to be snuffed out.

Easy pickings for cleaving fingers.

"There are other demons, too, Chikuma, who came to this world for peace," Michi said as she finished telling Taki's history. He wasn't here in this thicket, but Chikuma _needed_ to know his tale. The story of the kind, gentle giant who'd been her first demon target. "Not just those you've yet to cleave, but also those whose lives you've already destroyed. They deserved to be happy, to be at home in their new lives, and yet you stole that from them. Do you even know their names? Dai and Junko. Ryota and Oharu. Did you stop to think about who they were before you erased them forever?"

For nearly fifteen minutes, Akemi had gripped her wrist in his massive palm, crushing her bones to figurative dust, but it was only then, in that quiet moment as her question hung in the frigid air, that Michi resisted him for the first time. Pain protested in her shoulder joints as she stepped forward, her arms tugged backward by the stony fist smothering her wrist and the tattooed fingers clutching her elbow.

"Maybe it didn't matter to you," Michi said, "that they weren't your son's killer. Maybe it didn't matter if they were hurting or afraid. Maybe it didn't matter because you refused to let it matter. But here's what I don't get, here's how I know your story doesn't add up: what about the humans who died, Chikuma? What about the collateral lying at your feet?"

Chikuma wavered, just for a second, her white-knuckled grip on the yarn in her hand slackening. In turn, Akemi's grip faltered, and as his fingers loosened, Michi drew her hand forward and free, the movement oh so careful. Desperate not to jostle the demon into action.

"We managed to stop Junko," she continued, voice soft as the whispering wind. "Just in time, we intercepted her. Sent her on to Demon World and safety—before she spilled blood that belongs on your hands. But we were too late to help the others. To stop Ryota from killing innocents in the sleepy little village where he'd hoped to settle. To keep Oharu from sending seven people on to their graves. And Dai… Poor Dai. The first life you ruined completely. And just like with Ryota and Oharu, his wasn't the only life destroyed because of you."

The memory of a teddy bear swam across Michi's vision. Tan fur. A crescent moon on its forehead. Small and delicate. Meant for a child's arms.

Not for a dirty street corner.

Not for a fading memorial.

"Seven more humans were killed that day. A little kid. A child like Toshiki." A sob clogged Michi's throat, and her voice broke as she asked, "Did your son love stuffed animals, Chikuma? Because there's this teddy bear in that square, and it's for a child who never went home to his mother that night, and I can't begin to wrap my head around how you're okay with that."

With a sweep of her freed arm, she demanded, "If you did all this to make Human World safe, why are so many people dead? Did you realize they would die? Did you not care?" Blinking back tears, Michi shook her head. "Don't answer that. I already know the truth. None of this was about making humanity safe. You never gave a second thought to the halfway house. You never considered what we're working toward. All you want is revenge.

"But guess what, Chikuma? Spirit World already delivered your vengeance. Whether he deserved it or not, the demon Ikku is dead. Toshiki's killer is gone. He won't hurt anyone else. Which means the only person left hurting children is _you_."

That word—that crushing condemnation—hovered between them. Quietly spoken. Unflinchingly damning.

And Michi wasn't sure what she'd expected. Had she thought there'd be more rage? More scorching black in Chikuma's Loom? Or had she anticipated Chikuma to break? For all that armor to fall away, leaving the boneless, broken woman inside collapsing into the brambles of the forest?

Or maybe she'd expected denial. Or pride. Or acceptance.

Something.

Anything.

Whatever it was she'd anticipated, it certainly hadn't been silence.

And yet, Chikuma said nothing. _Did_ nothing.

She simply stood there, her dead, baleful eyes locked upon Michi, her fists still extended, their charcoal waterfall tumbling into the dry leaves decaying on the forest floor. The moaning wind caught in her discolored hair, sending strands dancing so wildly it was as though her steel roots hoped to shake the mud off their ragged ends.

Somehow, it was that silence that nearly bested Michi. Somehow, after everything she'd said, every life she'd exposed, every reality she'd summoned home to roost, Chikuma remained the Unweaver. Cold and callous.

Unapologetically monstrous.

And that bleak truth smothered Michi's hope as mercilessly as Chikuma flattened the yarn clenched in her fist.

"Say something, Chikuma," Michi said once she couldn't stand the quiet any longer. "Recognize what you've done. Admit who you've hurt. Tell the world and Toshiki the truth—"

"Do not say his name."

Chikuma spat each syllable, her gaze sharpening to knife-bright intensity as she stepped forward, closing the distance just as Michi had begun to do. But unlike Michi, no demon clutched her arm, and no threatening smoke curled about her jawline, its ominous touch summoning clammy sweat to her skin. Without such restraints, Chikuma moved as she pleased.

"Why? Because it hurts you?" Michi gritted her teeth against a gasping breath, then tossed her head toward the array of transplants standing like statues behind her. "Say their names instead. Acknowledge who they are. Admit you do this to them because you ignore that they're like us, that they're like Toshiki—"

Two things happened at once.

Ahead of Michi, standing with her legs spread wide, her hands held out before her, Chikuma yanked on a thread—and in answer, Akemi lunged. An elbow like a battering ram struck Michi between the shoulder blades, driving her to her knees. Matsu followed as Michi fell, the hand at her elbow skimming upward to curl around her neck and yank Michi's head back against Matu's thigh, pinning her in place.

Simultaneously, off to Michi's left, breaking across the plane of her extended territory like a knot of balled-up wire, a familiar Loom surged through the trees. Moving fast. Too fast.

Signature fast.

And before Michi's knees even settled in the dirt, Hiei was there, black cloak swirling around his calves, katana gleaming in the dappled, chilly sunlight, Loom a scorching tangle of black and mustard, scarlet and navy.

"Release her," he snapped at Matsu, his blade leveled toward her throat.

Matsu gave no ground, remaining as quiet as lifeless granite—her grip around Michi's throat just as stony.

In the space between heartbeats, Michi watched the calculations play out in Hiei's eyes. How long it would take him to reach her. How long it would take Matsu to wrench Michi's head sideways. The echo of a snapped neck through the trees. The river of blood down a katana that would find its target an instant too late.

All of it would take mere fractions of a second, but it would leave behind two dead girls and a woman who'd all too readily gotten her way.

As quick as those computations ran, Hiei banished them, whirling in a hurricane of black cloth to make his move on the Unweaver—the slow, decrepit devil who couldn't hope to evade him.

Only the Unweaver's fingers were already flying, the moments in which Hiei had contemplated his next tactic providing her all the opportunity she needed to weave her corruptive influence, and as Hiei's left foot slid forward in the brush, readying to brace him as he lunged, the web of his Loom began to change.

Black rage, mustard agitation, scarlet irritation, navy determination—all gone.

All leeching into stark green terror.

His Loom brittle and chaotic, Hiei's right foot never rose. His katana never slashed. The promise of death in his crimson eyes never found delivery.

How many seconds had passed since he'd blurred across Michi's vision? How few heartbeats pulsed between the birth and death of hope in her chest?

Not enough.

Not nearly enough.

Hiei's knees gave out, plunging him into the rotting leaves, and he crumpled, his katana falling from his grip—not forgotten so much as impossible to hold. Scrabbling fingers tore the strip of cloth from his forehead, revealing the Jagan eye beneath. Its iris flickered, glowing intermittently as he cupped a panicked, protective palm above it.

He didn't rise again.

Panic grew like a demonic weed in Michi's blood, tendrils snaking into her limbs, twitching in her fingers as she thrashed against Matsu's unbreakable grip. "No, Chikuma! Not him. Don't do this to him! Please. Please, listen to me—"

A fresh twist of Chikuma's fingers through her yarn silenced Michi, the hand around her throat choking her breath away to nothing.

Then the Ties That Bind twanged.

Where they wove through Hiei's Loom, the Ties had shifted, their pearly sheen had dulled, beginning to fade to frozen white, but Michi spotted them now, stretching into the forest, back toward the east and the shrine. Cords of pearlescent steel, reaching out in three separate sets.

To Yusuke. To Kuwabara.

To Kurama.

As the Ties tightened, growing stronger and clearer, a sob bottled up in Michi's throat. "Chikuma, please," she whispered.

Too late.

In a clamor of snapping branches and thunderous footfalls, the men reached the clearing. At their forefront, Yusuke skidded beneath a low-hanging branch, and no sooner had his body slowed to stillness than did his arm swing up, one hand formed in the shape of a gun. But just as quickly, it locked in place, level with his shoulder, no glowing orb of energy gathering at his fingertip, his muscles woven still by fingers plucking and twisting and knitting too quickly to be interrupted. With a garbled groan, he sank to his knees, his hand falling useless into his lap, a stream of intelligible curses on his lips, the electric brilliance of his threads glowing neon green.

Michi didn't need to look to know Kuwabara and Kurama had suffered the same fate, but she twisted her head sideways anyway, seeking Kurama, praying for a miracle.

She discovered Kuwabara first, an arm half-raised, hand curled around the hilt of a sword that didn't exist. His chest heaved with breaths so deep and all-encompassing not even the dead sprint that had brought him here could be their sole cause, and as he staggered backward, his eyes rolled up in his head and brought him crashing against an unforgiving tree trunk.

Still, there was no time for her to focus on Kuwabara, no time for lingering concern for the last—but no less important—of these men who'd stumbled in her life. Right then, with everything falling to pieces around her, she had only one driving thought: find Kurama.

He'd have a scheme.

He'd have calculated a dozen steps ahead.

He'd—

But no. Not this time. Not today.

In all the time she'd known him, first as Shuichi and then as Kurama, Michi had never seen him stumped as he was now. Like the others, he'd been caught mid-motion, a partially bloomed rose in his hand, its petals not yet open. He was off to her left, barely visible at the edge of her vision, but she felt his gaze on her, blistering her cheek with its desperate intensity.

Desperate—because he had no plan.

Desperate—because the Unweaver was winning.

Desperate—because Michi had failed them.

Before her very eyes, his body flickered. Red hair gave way to silver. Emerald eyes brightened to molten gold. Ears sprouted. Limbs lengthened. His shadow elongated and slanted across her toes. A breath later, his silhouette shrunk, receding backward as his frame compressed. The Kurama she knew returned, his cheeks sallow, his breath short.

And then it happened again. And again.

And again.

Too fast to be followed. A kaleidoscope shifting wildly, colors blurring into one another as the Unweaver pulled Kurama apart at the seams, wresting him into the demon form Michi had never seen before only to shove him back in his human body before he could acclimate.

Shredding him apart, bit by bit.

Because Michi had failed.

But she couldn't give up. There had to be options, some stone that remained unturned, some opportunity unexamined—some thread not yet pulled.

When the tug came, the sudden shift in her desires, Michi nearly retched. It was so sudden, so vicious in its whiplash, insisting she wanted nothing to do with saving her friends—proclaiming loud and without room for argument that this was right. This was meant to happen to them.

That she wanted them cleaved.

So she could be free.

Swallowing raggedly, Michi turned to the Unweaver. "Chikuma?"

The woman's attention snapped to her, the fragmented men forgotten instantly.

"How do you do it?" Michi asked, the words so quiet she could hardly hear them over her heartbeat. "How do you weave?"

Chikuma's ill-kept brows slanted together, consternation carved into every crease of her cheeks. "How do _you_?"

"I don't." Michi breathed slowly, willing her body to relax, begging her voice to stay even, trying to remember the words she wanted to say, trying to work out which ones were hers and which belonged to the Unweaver. "I've never figured out how. But I _want_ to."

Such an impossible statement.

A complete and utter lie. Bald-faced in its audacity.

Wasn't it?

"What you're doing now," she continued, lifting a hand out of the dirt to indicate the motionless demons all around them, "isn't the same as cleaving. You're not destroying their Looms. So how? How do you control people like this? How do you mold them beneath your fingers and make them what you want them to be?"

Chikuma's head tilted. Her oil-slick threads solidified for a second as the midnight black that had consumed them welcomed strands of emerald amongst their folds. Curiosity.

Tenuous.

But undeniably piqued.

"You want to learn?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Because the Unweaver wanted her to. Because skill fingers had twisted her up inside until it was all she wanted.

But she had to convince Chikuma of that—had to prove she wanted this.

Chikuma didn't speak Michi's language. She didn't care what happened to people. She didn't care about histories or personalities or hearts. Trying to reach Chikuma through empathy had gotten Michi nowhere better than on her knees in the dirt, deadly hands wrapped around her throat, smoke playing across her cheeks.

But Chikuma spoke a different language, and though it might play sloppy on Michi's tongue, she could speak it, too.

"To punish those who have hurt me."

One brow crept high on Chikuma's forward, its condemning downward slant forgotten as more emerald slipped between her threads. "Who would that be?"

"People who deceived me." Michi tossed her head, bucking ever so slightly against Matsu's hold, and the demon's grip loosened, allowed Michi to pull free and rise up, her butt leaving the backs of her heels. "People who I thought and hoped might be like me—but aren't and never were. People who would use me," she said, gaze flicking to Kurama, "for my power. People who would see me become something I don't want to be."

 _Want_.

Therein lay the Weaver's lexicon.

"Help me," Michi said. "Teach me how you do it."

Fresh fear spilled across Kurama's Loom, a patch of green bright against the dead gray and brown of the forest, its color true and unmistakable.

Michi ignored it, unable to tear her focus from Chikuma as the woman's fingers twitched within the tangle of cloth in her clutches. In answer to the woman's work, Matsu straightened, her shadow retreating as she backed away. Hardly daring to breath, Michi rose to her feet.

The movement brought to life a dozen injuries littered across her limbs. Scraped knees. An aching hip. Screaming pain between her shoulder blades emanating from the point of impact where Akemi had clobbered her.

She ignored all of it.

"Do I need a vessel like you use?" she asked, pointing a wavering finger at the woman's jumbled yarn. "Is that what I've been doing wrong?"

Chikuma looked down with a start, as if surprised to discover the yarn knotted between her fingers. Lips pressing into a line, she spread her digits, and the threads tumbled to the forest floor, the charcoal waterfall no more. "No. You need only to understand the Loom."

Meaning what, exactly?

Because Michi understood the Loom of Life. Far, far too intimately. Its every color. Its every shift. Its every connotation. She could differentiate cores and demystify interactions between disparate Looms. She could block out the world's filaments or soak in their intricacies.

But she couldn't weave.

And all those things she saw? All those pieces forever ingrained in her view of the world?

The Unweaver didn't experience any of that. Chikuma didn't see emotions. Nor did she weave feelings. Her sight lay in a different place. In wants and desires. In threads defined by their width not their hue.

Was Michi missing that pivotal difference? Was weaving beyond her, because she saw the Loom differently from Chikuma? Could she never weave as Chikuma did because the Unweaver's powers were innate but Michi's were merely a territory—a gift of Demon World's corruptive force?

She had to hope that wasn't the case.

"Enlighten me, then," she whispered.

Off to her left, a dead branch snapped as Kurama staggered, his body still metamorphosing too quickly to be followed. Michi didn't dare look at him properly, but she could've sworn he'd moved closer, like he was fighting to get to her, even now.

She wished he wouldn't.

She didn't want him near her.

"Weaving is simple," Chikuma said, "if you start from the right thread. Looms have two ends. Find them, and you may weave whatever you like."

Michi shook her head. "I don't understand. Two ends? What does that mean?"

Gaze locked on Michi, Chikuma bent and scooped up her yarn. Then she backed up a step, like she was putting distance between them, and looked down long enough to pinch two fingers of each hand amongst the threads. With a tug, the jumble of disorganized yarn came loose, spilling downward, leaving two ends pinned between the Unweaver's nails.

"Two tails. In a person's Loom, one remains loose, its end threaded back into the weave. The other connects an individual to the broader Loom of Life." Chikuma's lips peeled back in a proud smile, revealing grimy teeth. "Sever the latter and the Loom ceases to exist. Manipulate the former, and you change a person."

Shivers crept down Michi's spine.

So simple.

So obvious.

Yet somehow, it had never occurred to Michi. She'd always assumed Looms were composed of dozens—if not hundreds or thousands—of threads. Perhaps because her territory revealed the Loom of Life as a medley of colors, she imagined all those colors as disparate strings, independent of one another. But if Chikuma was correct, Michi had pictured it all wrong. Rather than a hundred different threads fed from a hundred different sources, each Loom was a single skein, multi-colored and ever-changing.

With only two ends.

Two access points.

When he'd tried to teach her, Kurama had suggested focusing on a single thread—but such a feat was impossible if his entire Loom was but one string itself. There'd be no means to isolate one thread from all the others because there were no others at all.

Now, though?

As she stared at those two ends pinched between Chikuma's fingers, her perspective shifted. Five colored Looms hung in the air around her—the boys' all gone brittle and panicked as they crumbled under the Unweaver's poisonous touch, and Chikuma's slippery and hard to see. But still there, nonetheless, its blackened rage giving way to icy blue pride as she revealed the secrets only she had ever unlocked.

Behind Michi, more threads waited, so broken and fragmented she wasn't sure they counted as proper Looms anymore. If she understood right, the strands extending from the transplants had once connected them to the Loom of the world, guiding all their interactions with the fabric of life, but Chikuma had severed that tie, and now they stretched to her instead.

Maybe someday Michi could seize them instead.

But first—the punishment she'd promised Chikuma she'd deliver.

Conveyed along the pathway Chikuma had taught her to follow.

With an uneven breath, she dragged her territory back in, closing it down to a circle merely ten feet wide, until only a few Looms remained within its bounds. Chikuma. Matsu. Yusuke. Kuwabara. Hiei. Kurama.

And—despite the desire surging her in chest, the rhythmic, insistent want that was not hers—she ignored the boys.

Forcefully, she shoved past the mottled green and yellow of their anxious fear and honed in upon the link between Matsu and Chikuma—the place where brittle white met oiled blue. She couldn't see her own Loom, couldn't yet work out where Chikuma had found her own end, but it didn't matter, and with all her focus, she crept into that connection where white bled into blue and slipped amongst the oil.

Instantly, anger that wasn't hers burned in her core, smoldering to life in her chest, its kindling made of grief so biting and sharp that it tore into heart, shredding her edges beneath pain and hate and loneliness. Her nails curved into her palms, her pulse thudding behind her eyes, the whole world narrowing down to the emotion pouring across the bridge she'd forged.

As if from some far-off place, a strained voice drifted to Michi.

"What are you doing?"

A demand. Tumbling from Chikuma's lips. Shocked. Unprepared.

Michi gasped, eyes battening shut as she smothered the rage seeping from Chikuma like toxic fog creeping across a battlefield. Extinguishing it. Refusing to let it burn her down to nothing as it had its owner.

"You said you'd hurt them," Chikuma cried, practically pleading, her hands clutching at her temples, her yarn fallen forgotten once more—one final time. "The people who deceived you. These monsters. I saw it in your Loom. What you wanted—"

"Quiet, Chikuma," Michi said.

But the woman didn't listen. "You wanted them punished. I know you did. I _made_ you want that. You were meant to help me. You said—"

"Enough, Chikuma."

The anger inside Michi fell quiet, and like a fire starved of oxygen, its spirit quelled as Michi straightened. Her eyes remained closed, the corporeal world abandoned in favor of the Looms she could never unsee, the colors forever painted across her vision.

With that tapestry spread before her, she did just as Chikuma had said she must do.

 _Manipulate the former, and you change a person._

So simple.

So cruel.

And yet, the only recourse she had left.

She poured herself across the connection she'd formed, slogging a slow, trudging path through a quagmire of black anger and lime surprise, through pine green fear and rust red bitterness. She gathered all those dyes, pooling them together and shoving them forward, purging them from the length of thread she left behind. On and on. Focus set on the end far from where she'd started—the only other exit from this Loom.

In her wake, she left what mattered, the pieces of Chikuma she refused to steal away, the root of who Chikuma was.

First, steadfast navy—the unfading will that had kept her going even after so much ruin. It had led her in the wrong direction, yes, but Michi would not be the one who broke that resolve. She would not be the one who destroyed Chikuma Nakasawa.

Second, loving indigo—the indomitable devotion of a parent, kept alive even once the son for whom it burned had left this plane. It had gone haggard at the edges, corrupted by untreated grief, left to fester and rot, but that decay was gone now, extracted beneath Michi's exacting efforts, pulled away to places where it could never again destroy something so precious.

And last, pained mauve—the unending hurt Toshiki's passing had left behind, the mourning sadness with which Chikuma had never learned to cope. It had become a shade lurking beneath all else, fueling her every thought and choice and word, and laid bare in Michi's wake, it glistened like a fresh wound, waiting to be dressed and treated, never to disappear entirely but at least ready to fade to scarring.

How long she worked, Michi would never know.

It was a task meant for giants, for talented psychics she might never rival. But there were no such psychics to do it for her, and so the assignment fell to her—to her unpracticed muscles and unskilled fingers.

Yet, ultimately, she found the way, through all those loops and coils, through hundreds of knots and purls, to the very end, where the second tail of Chikuma's Loom met that of the world. There, Michi released everything she'd gathered. The anger and surprise. The fear and bitterness. All of it shoved out into the Loom of Life to disperse into nothingness, so small and infinitesimal compared to the vastness of the universe.

And then, in tandem with Chikuma Nakasawa, Michi crashed to her knees.

* * *

The hand that cradled Michi's cheek was graced with calloused palms and scarred fingertips, but it was gentle—oh so gentle—as it guided her head to a steadying shoulder, another arm looping around her waist and drawing her to her feet.

"Michi?"

Her eyes fluttered open. "Kurama?"

A kiss ghosted across her brow. "Yes."

She tipped her chin back, bringing him into her line of sight. Red hair. Viridian eyes. The silver and gold long gone, returned to whatever recess he hid them within.

Then her gaze swung away, landing on the woman collapsed amongst dead leaves and broken branches, her haggard frame curled in on itself, sobs shattering through her shoulders and echoing back off the trees. Kuwabara stood over her, his every muscle tensed, ready to react at a moment's notice if needed.

To Michi's right, in the copse that had once been at her back, Hiei and Yusuke were corralling their remaining transplants, subduing their chaotic wanderings with stern orders and firm hands. A shout from the east preceded the arrival of Genkai, Asato, Yana, and Kido, reinforcements come at last, and in a matter of seconds, the boys had teamed up with Hiei and Yusuke, leading the transplants back toward the shrine, gentle but determined in their guidance, like sheepdogs herding bewildered sheep. Yana and Kaito each assisted an apparition who'd fallen in the fight that had broken out nearly a lifetime ago, helping them limp back through the trees.

Asato paused a moment, his gaze finding Michi's. His smile flashed, backed by powder blue pride, before he loped after the others.

Once his footfalls fell to silence, only five of them remained in the forest. Kuwabara still standing above Chikuma. Michi leaning into Kurama. And Genkai, unfathomable thoughts swirling in her brown eyes.

"So it's ended, huh?" Genkai asked at last, her gruff voice pitched low as she studied the sobbing heap that had once been the Unweaver. Her focus swung to Kurama. "How'd you do it?"

Silence stretched, and it was only after Kurama squeezed Michi's hip that she realized she was meant to answer. "I'd enlighten you if I could, Genkai," he said, "but with the exception of Michi, I'm afraid we were all quite useless."

Numb, muddled exhaustion weighed Michi down, and one of her old headaches asserted itself, kicking up a baseline behind her temples, but she managed to find her voice regardless. "I wove her," she admitted slowly, the truth clumsy and uncomfortable on her tongue. "She explained how, and I tried it on her."

" _She_ taught _you_ ," Genkai repeated, incredulous. "Did she not foresee how you'd turn that against her?"

"No. She didn't. She was too blinded by what she wanted to see—what I let her see."

"Which was what, exactly?"

Shoving a hand through her wind-swept hair, Michi fumbled to explain. "Chikuma wanted me to help her. I think that's why she'd offered to teach me when she found me in the square Dai had destroyed. She's lonely. Isolated. In me, I think she saw someone like her. So I let her think that's what I was—and that I wanted to learn to weave so I could help purge this world of monsters."

"And she fell for that?"

Michi shrugged, her shoulder bumping against Kurama's side. "She was desperate, and she doesn't see emotion in Looms. She sees what people want—not why they want it. The desire I revealed to her was true. I framed it that way on purpose." She glanced up at Kurama and smiled tiredly. "You misunderstood me," she said to him, "the same way she did."

His brows drew together as he conjured up her words. "You said you wanted to punish people you hoped might be like you, but weren't. People who would use you for your territory—and who would _make_ you use your territory." He laughed without humor as he said, "I'll admit, the description struck too close to my own fears. I thought perhaps I'd pressured you too much, that I'd asked too much of you."

"Right." Michi's eyes fell shut as she pressed her forehead to the crook of his shoulder. "She thought I meant you guys. But I meant her." Her lips brushed against his shirt as she sighed. "The explanation for how she weaves was simple, it turns out. A person's Loom is one thread, not many like I'd assumed. Once I understood that and knew to look for the exposed end, I stripped away what I didn't want her to feel, and..."

Kurama's arm tightened around her waist as Genkai said, "And you reduced her to this."

"Yeah." The word was broken, wavering and pained. "I did to her what she'd done to me. Changed her emotions against her will." She bit her lip, a sudden sob catching in her throat. "I had to. Didn't I?"

Twigs snapped beneath Kuwabara's feet as he shifted his weight awkwardly. "You saved us, Michi. You saved everybody. It may be ugly, but it wasn't wrong to do it."

"Exactly," Genkai said firmly. "Don't beat yourself up, Kuroki. Not over this." The rustle of cloth announced Genkai turning. "Can you carry Chikuma back to the shrine, Kuwabara? We'll turn her over to Spirit World from there. For now, we need to ensure our transplants are kept subdued until we can determine the health of their Looms." A brief pause. "Michi has earned a bit of rest before we subject her to that."

"Yup," Kuwabara said. "I'm on it."

Michi opened her eyes in time to see Kuwabara scooping Chikuma from the dirt, holding her uneasily as he set off after Genkai. But as they disappeared into the trees, neither Michi nor Kurama made to follow immediately.

Instead, she turned into him, wrapped both arms about his waist and crushing herself against his chest. "I'm sorry," she whispered, "for not listening to you. I had to try. I thought I could reason with her. If I'd known—"

"Michi, please don't apologize. You did what you had to." He waited until she looked up before adding, "I should've trusted you to do so from the start." A wash of purples filtered into his threads, their meaning clear and bright and unmistakable. "But we can discuss at a better time. Not here."

Soon. But not now. Because they _did_ need to talk. About those purples filtering across his threads. About the last thing she'd said to him on the phone. But he was right. Not here. Not amongst the final ruin the Unweaver would ever create.

And so, still tucked against his side, she left that clearing—that broken, horrible place where she'd at last become the Weaver.

And she did not look back.

* * *

AN: I'm not sure how to follow this chapter up with an Author's Note, to be honest. I'm rather proud of this chapter and how this whole fic has come together at the end. Fingers crossed that pride isn't misplaced!

Confession: I never intended for Yoko Kurama (or Youko; however the heck it's spelt) to appear in BBL at all. For me, the Kurama in this story is very much an exploration of who Kurama would be in wake of his decision to leave Demon World behind, at least until the end of his human life. As a result, his demon appearance wasn't meant to play any role here. That said, SO MANY of you hoped to see Michi react to Yoko, hence the ever so brief cameo here. I'll try to sneak in some reaction lines from Michi in the last two chapters since she didn't really have time to react here, haha.

I don't pay much attention to story stats on FFnet, but I was trying to figure out if this is the longest chapter to date, and in the process, I discovered that BBL has only a fifth of the hits that my fic from back in the fandom's heyday has. Yet, somehow, BBL has only a hundred or so less reviews, and that is... unbelievable? Magical? Incredible? Point being: thank you so much to everyone who has ever commented on this story (and to all of you that read every week, whether you leave reviews or not). It means so much to me!

And so, as always, the biggest heaps of love and thanks to last week's reviewers: DeathAngel457, knightsqueen05, PondRiverWilliams, Laina Inverse, Sidako, roseeyes, ahyeon, o-dragon, GinaLiz, Shell1331, reebajee, and MissIdeophobia!


	40. In Amethyst Afterlight

Botan's careful fingertips kissed the scrapes on Michi's elbows, stinging for so short a time the pain could've been imagined before moving on, leaving unblemished skin behind.

"How is everyone else?" Michi asked, staring up at the ceiling from her seat against the wall as Botan shifted her ministrations to Michi's knees. "The transplants, I mean. It was hard to see out there, but Chikuma forced them to fight. If anyone is hurt, you should—"

"You slept for three hours, Michi," Botan interrupted softly. "I've already seen to the others."

"Oh."

Had she really been out so long?

Walking back to the shrine with Kurama had felt like an endless journey, every step as formidable as moving mountains. She was tired, not in her muscles, but in her soul or maybe in whatever place her territory rose from. Eventually, Kurama had offered assistance, and she'd hesitated only a moment before setting aside her pride and accepting a piggyback.

He'd made quick work of the rest of the hike, though he'd chosen not to run, and she got the distinct sense he'd decided she wasn't up for the jostling that would've been involved in the breakneck pace he could manage—a decision she was immensely thankful for. In short order, he'd skirted the remnants of the transplants' camp, giving wide berth to the tents that had been torn down at some point after Michi had ventured into the forest.

Off toward the temple's distant stairs, most of the transplants had gathered, and though Michi had drawn her territory back within her eyes, she could still make out their Looms, largely whole and full of color. A small part of her had wanted to investigate, to figure out if all the transplants had returned to normal, but the idea of even posing the request to Kurama had been too weighty, and she'd remained in tired silence until he'd reached her room.

Only then had she spoken.

"Your room is cozier."

A gentle laugh had shaken through him, so quiet it could've been nothing more than a hearty exhale, and he'd changed course. In no time at all, she'd been curled beneath his sheets. Without her needing to say a word, he'd settled beside her, a hand stroking through her hair, and for what seemed like hours, she'd thought she'd never close her eyes successfully again.

Then, seemingly in the space of a single, involuntary blink, Kurama was gone. Botan had appeared in his stead, murmuring Michi's name and drawing her back to hazy consciousness.

Now Michi sat upright, shoulders propped against the wall, hands smoothing idly across Kurama's comforter as Botan worked. "Injuries aside, are they okay? They're Looms, I mean? Is anyone still cleaved?"

Botan's answering smile was too small, too gentle, lacking in all her usual perky enthusiasm. "I'm afraid only you can answer that, Michi."

Ah. Right.

She hadn't expected anything better—and yet, it had been impossible not to hope.

Blowing out a tired breath, she rocked her head sideways, drawing Botan into her line of sight. The ferry girl's hair was swept back in its frequent ponytail, but strands had escaped her elastic's hold, falling about her face in a halo of flyaway blue. Exhaustion hung in threads of gray through her Loom, but navy shone beneath, determination keeping her hands steady as she turned her healing powers to Michi's torn up feet.

"You were incredibly brave," Botan said, breaking the quiet, "to stop Chikuma when even Yusuke and the team couldn't."

When Asato was younger and prone to picking fights that left bruises he couldn't hide, his father used to say that bravery and stupidity were bastard siblings. The rest of his speeches had never stuck with Michi any better than they had Asato, but that line came to her now, as Botan withdrew her hands.

Bastard siblings, indeed.

"I wouldn't go that far."

"I mean it," Botan reiterated. "Plus, if the transplants aren't all safe yet, you're the only reason there's even the possibility of helping them get better. You can't deny—"

Michi flapped a hand. "I know. I know."

Botan laughed, the sound tinkling and bright. A bit of her usual verve returned despite the fatigue in her eyes. "Of course you do. It bears repeating anyway." Pulling her hands back, she looked Michi over. "Any injuries I've missed?"

A dull ache still throbbed between Michi's shoulder blades where Akemi had struck her, and she suspected a rather spectacular bruise might form in the coming days, but with Botan's threads so stormy gray with exhaustion, she didn't mention it. There was, however, a concern she had to raise. "Matsu might've used her energy on me. I think? I'm not sure what she's capable of exactly."

Botan bit her bottom lip, brow creasing as she pondered. "Is she the one with the tattoos?"

"That's the one."

"Were you in pain?"

"No."

"Then I'd think you're okay. From what I remember reading in her file, her energy presents like smoke, but if she were actively using it, you'd feel its effects as if you were being burned."

So it had just been a threat then. Nothing more?

Had Chikuma known that?

Had she cared?

"Well," Michi said, "I guess that's one worry settled."

Botan's too gentle smile returned, and as it turned her lips up at the corner, she slipped a hand through Michi's, her grip surprisingly firm as she stood and pulled Michi after her. "Bingo. Now, come on, let's get you some food. Yusuke found his way to the kitchen twenty minutes ago. If we play our cards right, we can snag first servings."

Laughing softly, Michi squeezed her hand. "I like how you think, Botan."

The ferry girl's smile bloomed into a proper grin, and with a hearty bounce livening her step and teal happiness overtaking the gray in her threads, she led Michi into the hall, off to seize dibs on ramen thoroughly well-earned.

* * *

Asato intercepted them halfway to the kitchen, swooping Michi up in a bone-crushing hug. His hair was mussed, his jacket gone missing, and he smelled decidedly like a puberty-stricken boy who'd not yet internalized the need for deodorant and frequent showers, but despite his stink, she wrapped her arms around him and squeezed back tight.

"I'm damn proud of you, Weaver," he said, his Loom shining with the light blues and purples of pride and affection. With a murmured excuse, Botan hurried the last steps to the kitchen, leaving them alone in the hall, and Asato eased back, hands cupping Michi's elbows, a grin bright as the sun on his lips. "Guess you're officially out of reasons for me to not call you that, huh?"

"Certainly seems that way."

His grin softened, eyes creasing with warmth. "Kurama explained what you did. I'm sure it wasn't easy, and I know you'd never choose to change a person's Loom, but sometimes the painful choices are also the right ones, yeah?"

Another of his father's sayings, though he'd usually meant them in relation to choosing schoolwork over concerts or days at the arcade—not choices that saved hundreds of lives.

Still, Michi hesitated, thinking of Chikuma collapsed in the woods, body shaking with sobs deep enough to rattle her to pieces. Michi had subjected Chikuma to that grief, to that pain that she'd learned to bottle away. To save her friends, she'd torn away the Unweaver's defenses and reduced her to the woman she'd been the day she'd lost her son, the hurt as fresh and visceral as it had been then.

There was a cruelty in that action that would never sit right with Michi, and she didn't need a crystal ball or spiritual gift to know its impact wasn't going to leave her after a mere nap. Perhaps it would never fade entirely.

But it had still been the only path left to her—the only choice capable of protecting the world that had become her life.

If she had to, she'd make it again.

"Yeah. I know." Sneaking a brief glance at the kitchen as Yusuke's laughter boomed down the hall, she added, "Botan wouldn't tell me much about the transplants. How is everyone? Taki? Matsu? Akemi?"

He sealed a finger over her lips. "You planning to list a hundred names?"

She answered with a narrowing of her eyes.

The last of his smile faded. "They're not back to normal, Meech. None have lashed out or anything, but they're not themselves. Not yet. It could be that they'll improve over time, but…"

"But I need to keep being the Weaver."

He winced and nodded reluctantly. "Afraid so."

So be it. At least the task before her now revolved around fixing Looms rather than destroying them. That was a start.

With his arm slung around her shoulders, Asato steered her toward the kitchen, but just before they crossed the threshold, he paused, keeping her out of sight as he said, "It's going to be easier now, though. The Unweaver isn't a threat anymore. The countdown to doomsday is over. We can take our time. Figure this out the right way." His lips tilted into a lopsided smile. "I mean, we don't have forever, because I know everyone—us and the transplants, both—want to get back to normal. But we can breathe a bit, you know?"

"I'm not sure I'll breathe easily until they're all fixed," she admitted, "but I get your point."

"It's okay to prioritize yourself for a second, Weaver." His grin split wider. "I mean, not to out your game or anything, dearest cousin of mine, but maybe go on a date with this new boyfriend of yours or something. Seems to me like he's been patient enough to—" He grunted as her elbow found a new home between his ribs. "Damn it. I was joking! Uncool—" Another wiggle of her elbow shut him down.

"You keep your big trap shut, Shade, or I swear I'll weave you into knots."

For half a second, his silence held, surprise holding him in a manacled grip. But then his dark eyes lit with devious mirth, cobalt spilling across his threads. "Oh yeah, Weaver? Are we going to have a little battle of territories? I've got loads more practice. You won't be weaving shit once I've got your shadow."

Ducking out from beneath his arm, she walked backward toward the kitchen. "I don't need my fingers for weaving. My shadow has nothing to do with it."

His brow creased as he mulled that threat over, but before he could summon a retort, Michi found herself yanked around, a pair of mischievous hands clutching her hips and lofting her off the ground.

"The badass bitch herself has finally stooped to gracing us with her presence!" Yusuke crowed, whirling in a circle that set Michi's head spinning, the last of her fading headache clamoring back to life. "What an honor!"

She swatted at his arm. "Put me down, you brute."

He ignored her, keeping her five inches from the floor as he carried her past Kurama and Hiei, kicked out a chair at the table, and plopped her on to it—doing a bang-up job of smashing her knee off Kuwabara's seat in the process. "Nonsense, Miss Badassery. No one of your awesomeness level should walk when measly dumbasses like us are around to serve you."

"Shut up, Urameshi," Kuwabara said, groaning with embarrassment, his threads silver and his face hidden behind broad palms. "It's not Michi's fault we charged in like a bunch of idiots."

"Of course, it isn't." Yusuke threw his arms wide. "Who would suggest such a thing? Certainly not I, Yusuke Urameshi, the Dunce Supreme." He pitched his voice a degree lower. "Though at least the Dunce Supreme didn't pass out in the middle of battle."

Kuwabara couldn't even muster a proper retort, only managing to mutter a second: "Shut up, Urameshi."

Clearing his throat to silence further dramatics from Yusuke, Kurama clarified, "Genkai has made quite clear that we are a crew of morons she is ashamed to bear even the remotest affiliation with, let alone call her former pupils. It appears our grand battle strategy left something to be desired."

"'Certifiably stupid,'" Kuwabara quoted, his voice muffled against his hands. "That's what she called us."

Hiei yanked back a chair and slumped into it, scowling out the window. "Useless drivel."

Yusuke continued to throw his arms about in wild exasperation as he hustled back to the stove, his Loom a heart mix of crimson and cobalt, equal parts irritated and humorous. A moment later, he returned with a bowl of steaming ramen. He dropped it before her. "Dinner for the badass."

Fighting laughter, she accepted the chopsticks he shoved her way. "If Genkai claims any of the decisions _I_ made were the right ones, we should check if she's fallen and hit her head, because trust me, I was just as stupid as any of you."

From the doorway, a gruff growl interrupted Yusuke's next show of absurdity. "Every last one of you played today like a fool, but only one of you managed to turn your idiocy into success. Must I continue to berate you about the difference?"

"Results-oriented thinking at its best," Kurama said, smile small, though as his gaze drifted to Michi, its corners grew, spreading to the creases around his eyes. "But given the uniqueness of today's events, one would hope we'd never find ourselves in such a position again, so perhaps we need not dwell on a better course of action."

"The best thing would've been Spirit World wiping the Unweaver's brain like they were supposed to before all this started," Yusuke groused. "Then none of this would've happened."

Quick as a striking snake, Genkai leapt nimbly and cuffed Yusuke on the back of the head. She landed lightly on the balls of her feet and carried on to the pot of ramen Yusuke had been tending, serving herself nonchalantly—as if she hadn't just smacked their chef into tomorrow. "Don't make light, dimwit."

"You think I'm wrong?"

"I think today is not the day for discussions of moral ambiguity and ethical quandaries. Also, I think you're an idiot, which means I always think you're wrong. But surely you already knew that?"

Sudden and intense affection glimmered in Yusuke's threads, the lavender hue nearly fluorescent. "You know you're a bitch, right?"

Genkai ladled herself a bowl of ramen, then glared at Yusuke through the steam rising from its surface. "Not even Spirit World's most pretentious rules would hold it against me considering the petulant pain in my ass constantly nipping at my heels."

For all her words to the contrary, Michi didn't miss the vast swathe of lilac filtering through Genkai's strained yellows and tired grays. Her Loom might not be as vibrant as Yusuke's usual neon, but its meaning remained just as clear. Affection. Familial love. Deep-rooted care for the boy she'd helped raise.

Scratch that—for the _boys_. Plural.

Because when Michi let her territory expand, its borders swelling to encompass the kitchen, she saw the way that lavender stretched beyond just Yusuke. From the exposed tail of Genkai's Loom, fragile purple filaments cobwebbed in all directions. To Kuwabara and Botan. To Hiei and Kurama. To Asato.

Even to Michi's own, invisible Loom.

The spread was so expansive she understood now why she used to think interactions like these arose from anywhere in a Loom, and the threads were so fine on their own that finding their starting point without knowing where to look was nigh impossible. But she knew now—and she'd never forget.

It took the silence stretching awkwardly long for Michi to realize all eyes had shifted to her, their awareness of her territory turning her into a beacon. An unintentional side effect of her curiosity, but not one she'd complain about. Taking advantage of the stage she'd been given, she set down her chopsticks. "I've got some questions, if you're inclined to answer."

Genkai arched a wiry brow in silent askance, but it was Yusuke who said, "Oh yeah? Guess it's the least we can do for Miss—"

In two seconds flat, Kuwabara sprung from his chair, snaked an arm around Yusuke's neck, and locked him in a headlock, Yusuke bent nearly double. They squabbled for a few moments, Yusuke squawking indignantly and Kuwabara holding on for dear life, but eventually Yusuke struggled free and, like a dog offended by a rude—but entirely necessary—bath, sulked off to a corner.

"Go ahead, Meech," Kuwabara said as he dropped back into his seat. "Hit us with them."

She breathed in slowly, girding herself. None of these questions were easy, but she had to ask them—she had to get answers.

"Did we lose anyone? Permanently?"

"Thankfully, no." Kurama drew out the final chair at the table and laced his hands over one knee once he'd settled comfortably. "We were able to subdue every transplant on the grounds, and Botan saw to those with severe injuries. She couldn't heal everyone, but demons are hardy. They'll heal quickly."

Michi frowned, chewing her bottom lip, the undisclosed ache between her shoulders feeling all the more unimportant. "Yet Botan could spare energy to heal a few scratches on me?"

"You'll be going home tonight, won't you?" Botan's tone was cheerful but firm, brooking no argument. "If you want to attend classes tomorrow without your classmates believing your new boyfriend hits with a heavy hand—"

Flapping a hand to shush the ferry girl for the second time in a half hour, Michi whirled on Yusuke and Asato. "The two of you need zippers for your traps. Overhear one conversation and you go shouting at anybody who will listen, is that it?"

"Whoa, now," Yusuke rebutted, straightening up from his slouch in the corner. "I'm not some gossip queen. I didn't tell nobody nothing."

Genkai sighed with all the world-weary exhaustion of a woman in need of a yearlong nap. "Dimwit, words _do_ have meaning. You know that, don't you?"

"Huh?"

Michi tuned them out as Genkai clobbered Yusuke with a grammar lesson about double negatives he'd surely forget in seconds, narrowing her focus down to her suspiciously quiet cousin. "Shade."

"Weaver," he answered with a lazy grin. Then he lofted his shoulders. "I'm not your culprit. Swear."

Then who?

To her left, a broad frame shifted awkwardly, suddenly too large for its small chair.

Ah.

Kuwabara.

"I didn't realize it was a secret," he said.

Well, it wasn't. Not really.

Right?

She needed only glance up through her lashes to be certain, to see the washed-out indigo and faded lavender and blanched aquamarine twining through Kurama's Loom to be sure. Yeah. They were no secret.

Her gaze softening, she snagged Kuwabara's hand and squeezed. "It's not." She looked up at Kurama again, straight on this time, no veil of her lashes necessary. "We're not."

"Ew," Yusuke groused. "Can it with the mushy stuff, would ya?"

For now, yes.

After all, she still had questions.

"Do we have a plan for the halfway house going forward?"

"Sure freaking do," Yusuke said. "Step one: wait for Michi to wake up. Step two: wait while Michi does all the work. And that's it. Easy shit." Shoulders rolling upward in a lazy shrug, he cracked his knuckles and tacked on, "I mean, it's not like fixing Looms is one of my talents. If I can't punch it better, my skills are pretty tapped out. Not sure what else you expect from the Dunce Supreme."

Genkai cleared her throat, and Yusuke fell quiet. "Ignore the buffoon. He's desperate for attention. In reality, we were waiting for you to help us assess which of our transplants are ready for reintegration now versus those who will need immediate reconstruction of their Loom before returning to their Human World homes."

Logical.

Except for one key flaw.

"'Immediate reconstruction?' I'm not sure that's possible. We have no proof you even can fix a Loom, and even if you could, I've figured out how to manipulate threads, but not recreate them." Michi stared into the broth of her ramen, the steam tickling her chin. "Chikuma ruined so many Looms, and she did it different than how I changed her. She didn't stop at reconfiguring a stretch of thread. She made parts of their Looms cease to exist. I don't know if that can be reversed."

"No one claimed it could," Genkai said. "As an ultimate goal, we'll want to resolve that, but right now, we simply want to know which demons seem stable enough to return home, even if that means doing so with an imperfect Loom. If we can get them reinstated, we'll work out a system to keep them in check. Regular visits. Frequent calls. Whatever's necessary."

Kurama met Michi's gaze, Loom awash in faint navy determination. "We'll take it one step at a time."

Because they had leeway now. Just like Asato had said.

"Right. Okay." She loosed a slow breath, then sat up a smidgeon straighter. "Final question, then."

Genkai dipped her chin. "Go ahead."

"What will become of Chikuma?"

A beat of awkward silence answered.

Yusuke rubbed uncomfortably at his neck. "If she were one of our usual baddies, I'd say we should pound her head in and be done with it, but I don't need to be called a dimwit to know that's not the option you're looking for."

On that last count, he certainly wasn't wrong.

"She needs treatment," Michi said. "Someone to help with her grief."

"She'll get that." Botan set her bowl down on the counter, only to pick it back up when her hands started fidgeting. "Spirit World will make sure it's included as part of her sentencing."

Michi flinched.

She should've seen a trial coming. Logically speaking, she couldn't even argue against its necessity. Chikuma had committed horrible atrocities. Her actions had killed nearly two dozen humans, putting their blood on the hands of innocent transplants, and in turn, the blood of those transplants now stained both Spirit World and Hiei. Ryota's death would always be Hiei's weight to bear, just as Dai's belonged to Spirit World.

Of course punishment awaited Chikuma.

And yet, unforgivable though Chikuma's cruelties were, Michi couldn't bring herself to hate the woman—couldn't force herself to accept the equally cruel realities of Spirit World justice. Based on what she'd learned in the last six years, she knew Spirit World was nothing if not exacting in its law enforcement, but that didn't mean she believed following the letter of the law always yielded an outcome worth accepting.

"What else will be part of her sentencing?"

Botan sighed, the exhale heavy with a pain that made Michi's stomach fill with ice. "I don't know. It's not my jurisdiction. If she's allowed to remain in Human World, I'm sure she'll do so without access to her powers, but… she may not stay here. If she's deemed too dangerous…"

The ferry girl didn't finish the thought. It hung in the air, drawing levity from the room like a black hole sucking in matter.

How ironic that a creature who spent her life leading souls on to their final rest could not bring herself to speak of death.

"When will we know Spirit World's decision?" Michi asked, and then, before anyone had a chance to answer, she added, "And where is Chikuma now?"

Mauve sadness strung through with lighter shades of pink regret threaded across Kuwabara's Loom. "We handed her over to Spirit World while you were asleep."

"Binky Breath himself came to collect," Yusuke said.

Kurama's knee nudged hers beneath the table, his hand curling over her kneecap a heartbeat later, long fingers squeezing just once. "As for when a decision might be handed down, I doubt Spirit World will deliberate long. We can ask Koenma to inform us once agreement is reached."

And that was it.

All the say she'd get in Chikuma's fate.

Maybe it was for the best. After all, how could anyone make the sort of ruling needed in the Unweaver's case. At first glance, it might've seemed straightforward. Uncomplicated. A monstrous woman doing monstrous things to vulnerable innocents. But Michi had seen pieces of Chikuma Nakasawa no one else ever would. She'd moved amongst the woman's threads. She'd felt her rage and hurt and loneliness. She'd lived—for minutes or hours—inside the same grief that Chikuma had borne for months. Its ache still hovered at the edges of her senses, vast and painful, even in memory.

It was hard to condemn Chikuma as the monster she might've been when Michi had glimpsed so intimately beneath the fiend's hide.

So maybe it was better to leave Chikuma's future in the hands of Spirit World, the hands of judges who'd act on fact and reality rather than the ugly, broken emotions that lived inside every human.

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

Michi's ramen had cooled by the time she set to actually eating it, and in a bout of false rage, Yusuke stole her bowl back, dumped its tepid contents, and served her fresh. His sensibilities satisfied, he doled out bowls to everyone, including Yana and Kaito as they came traipsing in from outside.

Their makeshift dinner passed slowly, no one in a rush to shoo away this first moment of calm they'd had in weeks. Even Hiei seemed content to stay at ease. Ostensibly, he sat rigid in his chair, emptied bowl before him, contributing nothing more than the occasional barb to the conversation, but as Yusuke celebrated finally rolling his ramen cart back out of storage and Kuwabara breathed a happy sigh that he could return to studying without interruption, there was no missing the contented aquamarine painted across Hiei's Loom.

It was as the sun's last rays disappeared beyond the kitchen's window that Genkai broke the chatter. "Kuroki, if you plan to head home tonight, we'll need to appraise the transplants sometime before I start rotting in my grave."

Yusuke snorted. "Don't tease me with the one thing that could make tonight better."

The old psychic didn't even both to acknowledge her protégé, turning a stiff back on him as she headed for the hall. Stifling a smile, Michi followed. The others stayed behind, voices rising as some joking disagreement about who'd screwed up worst today kicked up between them, and when Michi glanced back over her shoulder, she spotted cobalt threads spilling over the kitchen's threshold in a vivid sea.

Her smile grew.

"You know he loves you, right?" she asked Genkai. "Yusuke, I mean."

Genkai chuckled. "As thoroughly as I love his dumb ass, yes." The slick of warm indigo through Genkai's Loom promised she loved him very much indeed, and when Genkai peered at her sidelong, Michi was again reminded the woman's affection wasn't constrained to her most infamous pupil alone. "But don't go telling that idiot. I'd never hear the end of his crowing."

"My lips are firmly sealed."

"And you, Kuroki, realize the importance of what you did today, right?"

Oh. This again.

Perhaps she should've seen a solemn question coming. Turnabout being fair play as it was.

"I do."

"And you also realize there is nothing to feel shame about? Nothing to blame yourself for?" Genkai drew to a halt before a door leading to the veranda, one palm splayed against the wood. "Chikuma Nakasawa made the choices that brought us to today. The rest of us have only answered best we can."

"I know."

"Yet I see the weight on your shoulders."

A deep breath inflated Michi's lungs, bracing her as she moved to the window left of the door and looked out at the lawn. She didn't rush to pull together an answer and Genkai held her silence with steady patience, and so, for a time, they simply stood together in that empty hall, wind whistling beyond the door, the light of the moon painting them in gray.

Around one more turn in the hall, Taki waited, hidden behind psychic wards Michi hoped he'd never need again. Outside, the rest of their transplants huddled, weathering out another night in this place that was meant to be a halfway house, not a forced home. A train ride away, Mushiyori City was likely quieting for the night, blissfully unaware of the terror that no longer haunted its streets.

The world had changed today.

And no one even knew it.

Just as strangely, Michi had changed, too.

She'd become the Weaver. She'd walked down a path from which there was no returning, a path that just six months ago would've been unfathomable. If her life were laid out like a map before her, a dozen forks would lie along its roads, the path connecting them highlighted in pearlescent brilliance, and at each split, she'd made choices—decisions that had brought her here, that had made her the Weaver, that had made her _her_.

They were littered everywhere, all those little fissures where her life had altered course.

First, there were those that had linked her indelibly to Kurama, carving out a place for him inside her heart. The very earliest of them all had been choosing not to join the girls for a night out the day she'd encountered mysterious Shuichi on the subway. But then there'd been keeping him a secret from Genkai. Boldly asking him out. Ignoring the warning sign that was Yusuke Urameshi with his neon incandescence and Ties That Bind.

Attending that holiday party.

The biggest divide lay there, the paths she could've chosen forking wide, a canyon carved between them, and at first, she'd veered west. Veered away from Kurama and Asato, Yusuke and Genkai, Hiei and the halfway house.

But then she'd found a bridge leading east. Rickety. Terrifying. As sure to dump her into the canyon as it was to deliver her across it.

Still, she'd crossed it.

Again.

Back to the shimmering luster of her path—of the _right_ path.

Nonetheless, the forks had continued, a litany of decisions that had brought her to the moment she turned the Unweaver's own knowledge against her. Helping with the withdrawals. Learning to expand her territory. Embracing Kurama for all that he was. Charging into the forest when she could've—and perhaps should've—remained at the shrine.

Playing Chikuma at her own meddlesome game.

And truthfully, Genkai was right. Many of those choices, many of those forks Michi had traveled down had been her options to take—but they hadn't been her opportunities to create.

They'd been reactions. Diverging futures in which one path was no path at all, nothing more than a choice that could never be chosen.

And now she was here, standing beside Genkai in a hall she'd walked a thousand times. Only, never before had she walked it was the person she was now—never before had she been the Weaver, instead of merely Michi.

There was no going back, no pretending she couldn't change a person in ways they could never hope to fight against. She'd done it once. She could do it again. And though she'd never allow herself to use her powers the way the Unweaver had, that truth didn't go away. Especially not with the damaged Looms of so many transplants awaiting a cure she wasn't sure existed.

The silence could've stretched for hours—though Michi suspected it was only minutes—before she said, "I admire Yusuke, you know. How he doesn't dwell. How he can put the past behind him, in the grave where it belongs. I admire him… But I don't think I want to be like him. I don't want to forget—not any of it. Not what I've done. Not the people Chikuma hurt. Not even Chikuma herself." She exhaled, long and slow, and as the last breath left her lungs, she straightened and turned to Genkai. "Over time, weight becomes less heavy. You adapt to it. Learn to move despite it. And honestly, I think that's okay. I think that's what I want. So yeah, there's a weight on my shoulders, but there should be. I wouldn't be me if there wasn't."

Genkai's calculating gaze softened. A smile curled at the corner of her lips.

"You're a smart girl, Kuroki. Stubborn enough to put even the dimwit to shame, but smart." She raised the hand that had fallen away from the door and pulled it open, allowing in the stiff breeze from outdoors. "You'll need that wit to survive this new boyfriend of yours."

Just like that, the sincere moment dissipated, Genkai's dry stab at humor—and the layer of truth tucked beneath it—dispersing the tension in the hallway, blowing it away as if it were carried off on the wind.

"Had to fit in a jab, huh?"

"I don't do sappy. Surely you know this?"

Michi laughed.

Yes. She certainly did.

But not even Genkai's most biting joke could hide the lavender still dyed in her threads nor the doses of ice blue pride and aquamarine contentment beside it—because love wasn't always sappy.

Sometimes—oftentimes, even—it merely _existed_. Plain and unadorned.

And no less beautiful for it.

* * *

Genkai took notes.

As she and Michi stepped onto the veranda, the light of an external lamp lit the pad of paper Genkai slipped from her pocket, and she scratched down names—a running list of every demon whose Loom showed signed of cleaving.

The entirety of their remaining transplants had gathered in the backyard, more tents strung between trees, more campfires glowing in the darkening night. Michi studied them all, pushing her territory out to envelop all those familiar souls. Just over a hundred all told. Once, such numbers would've reduced her to a night huddled alone in her apartment, nursing an unceasing migraine. Now, it merely tested her limits as she worked to discern which Loom ended where.

In the end, Genkai's list filled two tiny pages. Twenty-three names in total.

Many of the others weren't wholly healthy, still too angry or anxious or irritated in a way Michi knew didn't match their usual spirit, but their threads weren't weakened or bleached white, and that was enough for now. If the other symptoms persisted, they'd see to it over time. In the coming days, Asato, Yana, and Kaito would get these demons back to their homes, to the lives they'd carved out in Human World—but twenty-three would stay behind.

Or, truthfully, twenty-four.

"Taki, too," Michi said as she waved good night to the demons in the encampment and followed Genkai back inside. "I'm sure he's not better. Not without my help."

Nodding sharply, Genkai scrawled his name on her list as well, not at the bottom where Michi expected but at the very top of the first page. "The question is, Michi, when will he get that aide?"

Michi's brows rose involuntarily. She didn't miss Genkai's meaning.

"You want me to try now? What about catching a train?"

"They run until midnight. You've got four hours yet, if you choose to use them."

Three measly hours? To repair a Loom as ravaged as Taki's? A preposterous proposal. Entirely unrealistic. And yet…

Once she went home tonight, she wouldn't return to the shrine any earlier than next weekend. If she didn't attempt stitching Taki's Loom back together now, he'd have to wait all that time. And maybe, in the grand scheme of things, a few days wasn't the end of the world. Considering how long he'd been here, what was five more days truly?

But no—that wasn't right.

Five days was _everything_.

"Okay," she said softly. "Right. I'll give it a try then."

Genkai answered with nothing more than a bowed head, a turned heel, and a steady pace as she returned to the kitchen. Apparently, this was a task Michi would tackle alone.

So be it.

The floorboards were cool beneath her toes as she padded to Taki's door. At the threshold, she refused to pause so much as a second, and in a single smooth motion, she stepped inside, closing the door behind her—sealing herself into a world where no one existed but her and Taki.

As always, he remained on his bed, stoneskin encasing him in rough armor, and as she had many times before, she perched at the edge of his mattress and curled a hand over his. "Hi, Taki," she whispered. "I hope you still trust me like you used to. I think I'm going to need that trust, my friend."

Smoothing her fingers over his absently, she pulled her territory in until it was the tightest bubble she could manage. Encasing just her and Taki. Just her and the first demon she'd ever understood enough to love.

His threads remained as they had been. Brittle. White. Immobile and unchanging. Raw and painful against her second sight, stabbing at the headache in her temples. But she knew better than to lose herself in all that white. She wasn't the girl she'd been hours ago, when she'd last attempted this task. The Weaver knew what that Michi did not.

Because Looms had two ends.

And to change them, one needed to weave the tails, not the thread in between.

Searching out Taki's ends was like untangling a knotted skein, trailing through loops, twisting through tangles, desperately seeking not to lose her place amongst the jumble. With the entirety of his Loom dyed a singular, snowy white, the pieces of him blurred into one, but she clung to one bit of thread at a time, moving ahead slowly but surely until at last she found his end.

It was the tail that connected to the world's greater Loom, frayed and thin, but still holding on stubbornly, an anchor against a monsoon. For a time, she puzzled over its tenuous connections to the gauzy filaments of the air around them, trying to work out how she could weave it back to fullness.

Instinct kept her from dwelling long.

Now that she knew how to perceive his threads, it was as though other pieces of the Loom of Life's puzzle had fallen into place. Starting at his connection to the world was wrong. That might've been how the Unweaver had sought to break him, but it wasn't how Michi would heal him.

Eyes closing, her fingers still stroking the crags of Taki's knuckles, Michi reversed course. Bit by bleached bit, she worked her way back through the fragile expanse of Taki Chikuma had left behind. The going was as slow and plodding as before, and yet, somehow, it felt as if she knew the stretches of thread through which she moved, as if passing along them once had taught her their pathways—as if, though their colors might change, these roads were always the same.

Finding his other end happened quite suddenly, and she suspected that abruptness stemmed from all the thread that wasn't there. After all, Chikuma had whittled away at Taki for months, breaking off pieces of his Loom with dogged persistence.

It was Michi's task to bring those pieces back.

At first, no means of doing so presented itself. Instinct had brought her here, but it didn't hold all the answers. Unfortunately, there was no one left to teach her. Even Chikuma, the only person to master weaving, had never stitched a Loom back together.

Michi was in unknown territory.

But then she remembered the way she'd changed Chikuma, how she'd seized upon the pieces of the woman that should not be and stripped them away. Perhaps helping Taki required the opposite.

Rather than removing what she wished not to see, she had to summon back that which she loved.

It was the work of moments to draw up memories of the Taki she'd once known. His careful, docile nature. The soft, even temper of his voice. His polite insistence on calling her Miss Kuroki, no matter how many times she asked him not to. The timid curiosity with which he approached human life, desperate to learn but terrified to out himself as not belonging in his new home.

A kind spirit. Full of warmth and affection, concern and empathy.

A sweet, gentle behemoth.

Her friend.

At first, she was so focused and the change so subtle, that she didn't notice the impossibly thin fibers of color brightening amongst Taki's sea of white, but as those colors coalesced, shifting to steady aquamarine calm, she blinked her eyes open and stared at the threads webbing across his features. The sheer brightness of the hue nearly startled her from her work, but she shoved her surprise aside and redoubled her efforts, flooding the space between them with the affection and friendship she'd come to treasure with Taki.

His Loom took on the shade of a bright, midday sky—blue, blue, blue as far as she could see. White melted away, snow giving way to shimmering water.

At the end of his Loom, around the tail where she'd concentrated her attention, strands started to gather, the filaments of the world bunching and twining, raveling into a thread that joined Taki's, lengthening his Loom.

Returning it—and him—to how it was meant to be.

Her fingers still traced Taki's thoughtlessly, and beneath her fingertips, his knuckles softened. His stoneskin retreated, revealing warm flesh. Across his entire body, the roughened armor he'd worn for weeks released, freeing him from its stony casing.

Breathless, she wrapped her hand around his. "Taki?"

A beat of silence. Long and wavering and full of a hope she dared not consider too directly for fear of that ash it might become.

And then, in a whisper rough like sandpaper: "Miss Kuroki?"

* * *

AN: Next week, this fic ends. Unbelievable. Bananas!

Writing the denouement of a story is always the hardest part for me, and this chapter is a bit more sober and melancholy than the next will be. I'm having a lot of fun wrapping up this fic's final pieces. It's a joy to bring this project to a close.

Random tidbit: 'Michi' means 'path,' which is a thing I've known since I picked that name well over a year ago. I hadn't necessarily intended to connect the dots so firmly to her character development like I did in this chapter, but I rather like it now that I have. Hope it wasn't too corny to forge that link.

Unless FFnet dies an untimely death, this story is probably going to hit 500 reviews, and that is magically wonderfully. Heaping oodles of thanks to: MissIdeophobia, o-dragon, Laina Inverse, Guest, ThatOneGirl, GinaLiz, Rasne, ahyeon, roseeyes, Shell1331, and Ahryielle! Y'all rock!


	41. Tangled in Teal

A half hour before midnight, Michi and the boys left the shrine, piling out the door onto the veranda in a clamoring mass. Yusuke and Kuwabara hollered and raced for the steps, their energy boundless despite the hour, and though they weren't as fast, Asato and Yana sprinted in their wake. Kaito followed more sedately, pausing long enough to dip a bow to Genkai before strolling down the path, hands tucked deep in his pockets.

Michi lingered a moment longer still, flanked by Kurama on her right, Hiei a near featureless shadow at the foot of the steps. "You'll tell us if Taki's condition destabilizes?" she asked Genkai.

Tonight had been a start, a first step in fixing Taki's Loom, but he wasn't whole yet. A few hours hadn't been enough time. But the hope was that he'd hold until next weekend, when she could finish stitching him back together—reminding his Loom of who he was.

Genkai scoffed. "Asking dumb questions will waste precious time if you want to catch that train."

"But you'll tell us," Michi said again, ignoring the woman's sardonic tone, "if he worsens?"

"Yes, Kuroki. I'll keep you informed."

Right. Good.

For now, that assurance would have to do. In five days' time, she'd be back here. Then she could take care of the rest.

"Night, then," Michi said after a beat, nearly stripped wordless by the rampant anticipation in her chest. Soon she'd have her friend back, and after Taki, the other twenty-three transplants waited, too. Never in her life had she hoped for a week to pass so quickly—and yet, by the same token, she couldn't help hoping it would never pass at all.

After all, she'd made a promise to Runa, and come Friday, the two weeks she'd bought herself were up. The deadline to come clean was rapidly approaching, and she meant to keep the promise she'd sworn, even if nothing in the world had ever terrified her more.

Runa deserved that much.

The distant cousin of a smile crooked Genkai's lips. "Go, you three. If you're not careful, the dimwit will beat you to the station, offend the conductor, and trap you on foot while the train leaves with you in its dust."

No further prodding was needed to urge Kurama and Hiei into motion, and yet Michi stayed rooted in place, gaze roving out across the lawn, past the dying coals glowing like pinpricks in the transplants' slumbering encampment, and on to the skeletal trees beyond, their trunks lit gray in the moonlight. Somewhere out there, she'd changed, become someone new and different and yet still entirely Michi—and thanks to that change, she could save Taki and all the others.

What a miraculous thing.

Her chest alight with that unbelievable wonder, she granted a final, wordless wave to Genkai and gave chase to Kurama and Hiei. Ahead, Yusuke's laughter pealed up the steps, booming and thunderous and full of heart as electric as his Loom. Its warmth settled alongside the sparking joy in her ribs as she drew even with Kurama and slipped her fingers through his.

His threads shifting to silken blues, he glanced sidelong at her. In the starlight, his eyes were hunter green, dark and full of a promise that set Michi's toes curling. "Not tired?"

"Apparently three-hour naps extend a girl's bedtime," she said, smiling even as a blush burned in her cheeks. "Who'd have known? Only time will tell if it'll be enough to get me back to Mushiyori."

Kurama chuckled. "Can I entice you to wager on it?"

"Nope. Not a chance." She'd be asleep the moment the train's swaying motion kicked in, and they both knew it.

In the shadows at the edge of the path, Hiei scoffed softly. "None of this would matter if we weren't bound to your ridiculous transportation. I could be back in your city in an hour."

Again, Kurama laughed, the sound lovely as a tolling bell, his Loom flushing with cobalt as blue as the shadows painted across the steps. "Surely you've grown accustomed to trains by now, Hiei? We've been riding them nearly daily for weeks."

Hiei scowled into the darkness as if it hid his mortal enemy. "Familiarity does not necessitate fondness, fox."

"True," Michi said, but added teasingly, "Trains are so perfectly normal, though. Don't you want to be normal, Hiei?"

The sneer he shot her way was so completely composed of scorn and contempt and downright disgust that it was all Michi could do not to double over laughing. "Both of you are insufferable," he snapped, then quickened his pace, leaping down the steps in a blur of flouncy, offended black.

"So," Michi said, drawing out the syllable wryly, "Hiei isn't a fan of normal, then?"

Kurama dipped his head, shoulders shaking in barely contained amusement. "Considering he may have just excommunicated us from his already rather limited list of friends, I'd say not."

She pitched her voice in a whisper she knew would carry, summoning her most aghast tone. "Are you telling me Hiei has friends?"

Fifty steps below, Hiei whirled, cloak snapping in the wind. His hand fell to his katana's revealed hilt, but despite the threat, amused blues ran like an undercurrent through his Loom, visible even at such a distance. "Morons," he called at them, true anger absent from his tone.

Yusuke broke up from the cluster of boys waiting at the road and loped back to Hiei's side. "Not nearly enough oomph, short stuff. This is what you're looking for." Grinning like the punk he was, Yusuke flung both middle fingers to the sky.

This time, Michi really did burst into laughter hard enough that she nearly tumbled down the steps. Only her hand interwoven with Kurama's kept her steady. Wiping tears from her eyes, she leaned into him. "You know," she murmured, her whisper truly meant for privacy this time, "it's hard to imagine a time when I didn't realize all of you were as close as you are. Sometimes, I try to think about Hiei in the context that I used to know him, all haughty and aggressive and strangely otherworldly, and then I try to match him with who I know him to be now, still all those same things… but also, not so otherworldly after all."

"Deceptively complex, isn't he?"

Michi's thoughts flashed back to the night Hiei had walked her home, after they'd first formulated their plan to combat Chikuma. The grief he'd felt over Ryota's death had been as real and fresh as her own. She didn't let herself think about how much worse it must've been for him, to return to whatever place he called home and clean a friend's blood from his sword.

Yet he'd never faltered. Never fell down. Never gave up.

Deceptively complex was one way to put it. Or maybe he was just a messy, intricate, utterly _perfect_ person, muddling through best he could—just like everyone else.

"Yeah," she said after a quiet, peaceful moment. "Even if he'd like to pretend he isn't."

They reached the last step and joined up with the others, hurrying down the road to the train station. No more than twenty yards on, Yusuke broke into a jog, shouting something about getting their tickets before the office closed. Without skipping a beat, Kuwabara followed.

"Don't even get me started on Yusuke," Michi continued as shadows swallowed the man in question up, rendering him nothing but echoing footsteps lost in the darkness. "When you introduced me to him, and I saw the Ties That Bind between you, I was dumbfounded. Then to discover him in Taki's apartment, shouting at me about being the ex-Spirit Detective? I don't know how I didn't realize what you were, though considering how thoroughly I underestimated who _he_ was, even then, maybe it's not that surprising."

"And you like who you've discovered him to be?"

Michi laughed. "If there's a person in the world who wouldn't like Yusuke, I don't want to meet them."

More quiet. Comfortable. Easy.

Up ahead, Yana and Kaito were debating something that must be music related. Kaito would happily debate the color of the sky if it gave him a chance to flaunt his wit, but there was little else in the world that could rile Yana as thoroughly as a music discussion. Asato walked between them, fingertips buried in his back pockets, head tipped back to the stars. Daydreaming? Reveling? Thanking some Spirit World deity for seeing them through? Either which way, the sight of him brought a smile to her lips.

Her stubborn bull of a cousin. The hero who had saved her when no one else in her life had known how.

One of her dearest friends.

A gentle squeeze of her fingers brought her attention back to Kurama. "You mentioned normalcy," he said, gaze flicking to her only a moment before darting back to the road. "Is that what you want? To be normal?"

She turned the words over in her head, testing answers on her tongue. "Is 'moderately normal' an acceptable response?"

His eyes back slanted to her, a brow rising in silent askance for further clarification.

Again, she spoke with deliberate slowness, testing each thought before she voiced it aloud. "Moderately normal. The type of girl who rides home on trains. Who aces her exams and finally settles on a major. Who hangs out with her friends on weeknights and shops too long without buying anything at all on weekends. The type of girl who goes on dates with her boyfriend." She bumped her elbow to his, carrying on as if her cheeks weren't scorched with heat. "A girl who sleeps in her apartment without being scared. Or sleeps in her boyfriend's because she wants to—and, oh, how she wants to—but not because it's the only place she's safe."

He had to clear his throat before he could summon words. "I think those are perfectly acceptable things to want."

Her teeth snagged her lip. "Glad to here it. But I wasn't done."

"Oh?"

"Everything I just described… that's all just regular normal, isn't it?"

"In theory."

She ignored the teasing note in his answer, knowing he was prepping for some joke about delving into human experiences beyond his realm of knowledge. Instead, without giving him a chance for further interjection, she added, "Regular normal isn't what I want."

Breathing in a gulp of fresh, lovely midnight air, she unfurled her territory, and all around her, the world came to life. Her friends' Looms clarified, brightening into lovely shades of aquamarine and cobalt, lavender and teal. The thinner threads of the wind and the trees curled like gossamer strings, strung through with the simple colors of sleeping animals hidden among the branches.

Sensing her territory, Asato twisted around, linking his hands behind his head and watching her with a lazy, lopsided grin on his lips. She answered with a smile of her own, and a moment later, he'd turned right way around, flinging his arms around Yana and Kaito and putting an end to their musical debate.

"Moderately normal is more my speed, I'd say. You know, the type of girl whose friends who carry around swords and shoot magic from their fingers. A girl with a job at a halfway house transitioning demons. And with a boyfriend who definitely undersold the variety of his ears."

A choked laugh interrupted her, and she paused long enough for Kurama to gather himself and shake off the lime surprise zinging through his Loom. "Come again?"

"For one thing, you gave me no reason to picture silver."

"I didn't realize you were picturing anything."

Now it was her turn for startled laughter. "You're kidding, right? You think you can tell someone you have 'varieties' of ears and they won't imagine what that looks like." Slipping her hand free of his, she ticked off her fingers as she said, "I didn't expect silver. Or a tail. Or gold eyes. Or for you to grow taller. How in the world does that work, by the way? Do your bones lengthen? Wouldn't that be horrifically painful—"

He snagged her hand again, quieting her questions with a press of his warm lips atop her knuckles. "This form does not physically become that one. I don't shift between them in the sense you're thinking. It's a change driven by my demon energy, not a change in physical matter."

"Right. Got it."

"Do you really?" he asked, not in disbelief so much as in pleased surprise.

She shook her head. "Not even a little bit." He deflated a degree, and she quickly added, "But I don't need to. Not yet. You'll have plenty of time to teach me."

She didn't say it again then—those words she'd offered him as a goodbye if it had all gone sideways today—but she felt them, tucked inside her chest, squeezed against her heart. In turn, she saw them in his Loom—lush indigo spread amongst swathes of affectionate lavender and heady imperial purple—and she buzzed with the steady _rightness_ of those shades.

Kurama kept hold of her hand all the way to the station, and she bid goodbye to Asato, Yana, and Kaito with the other, watching as they trekked back to the shrine and the demons who were their charges. Kurama's thumb still stroked across her knuckles while they found their seats, and in fact, it was only as the train churned into motion and she tucked herself against him that his hand finally slid free of hers.

In no time at all, she drew her legs up onto the cushions and slipped down sideways, resting her head in his lap and spreading into the empty third seat of their row. As her eyes closed, long fingers tangled in her hair, rubbing soothing circles into her scalp, and she fell asleep with his name on her lips, those three words not far behind.

 _Soon_.

She'd say them again soon.

* * *

Monday passed in a sleep deprived haze, but Michi clung to her wits in the lecture she shared with Runa and while walked off campus together. Despite the strangeness of Michi's behavior over the last week, Runa didn't pry, but when Kurama appeared amongst the sea of students and professionals swarming Nako Square, Runa snagged Michi's hand.

"Everything's okay?" she asked first, and then, as soon as Michi started to nod, followed up with, "Dinner this Friday?"

Runa left off the implied so-you-can-explain-what-the-heck-is-going-on, but the words rang loud between them anyway. Navy determination and emerald curiosity sparkled like jewels in Runa's Loom, and Michi pressed her lips together in a rueful smile.

Knowing that conversation was on the horizon and actually setting a time for it were surprisingly different beasts.

But not even the knot in her stomach could keep Michi from agreeing. "You bet. I hope you're ready for a Tell All event for the ages. No paparazzi please."

Kurama reached them then, glancing between from Michi's wavering smile to Runa's arched eyebrow with polite—feigned—curiosity in his eyes. He must've already guessed what had turned Runa so serious; after all, Michi had told him just that morning, over bleary-eyed breakfast, what she'd promised Runa.

Her next suggestion had actually been his. "You okay with doing dinner in? At my place?"

Now, Runa's other brow joined the first, shooting straight to her hairline, but quickly the lime in her Loom gave way to a deepening mix of emerald and pleased aqua. "That serious about the paparazzi, huh?"

Michi bit her lip, knowing better than to try for a smile that would fail her.

The humor smoothed from Runa's features, cobalt giving way to coral in her Loom. "Yeah, Kuroki. Your place it is."

"Great. And I promise, I won't be the one cooking."

Runa snorted, a grin catching her lips again. "Well, thank fuck for that."

* * *

That night, Michi re-packed the suitcase she'd lugged to Kurama's the morning after Chikuma had confronted her in Mushiyori. Thanks to the drawer Kurama had cleared in his dresser and the hangers he'd insisted she lay claim to, it wasn't as full now as it had been then. Nonetheless, fitting together its contents felt like a jigsaw puzzle for the ages.

From a spot on his bed, legs crisscrossed in front of him, Kurama watched with an impossible to decipher expression as she zipped the last pouch of her bag and rolled it to the door. His Loom—flush with blues in a myriad of shades—gave her no clues to his temperament.

He'd gotten too good at Genkai's old trick.

Back to the door, she planted her hands on her hips. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Like what?"

She tried to roll her eyes, but she suspected her glower missed the mark. It was darn near impossible to glare with his attention focused on her the way it was now—admiring in more ways than one.

Which was rather ridiculous, all things considered.

The night before, they'd arrived home so late she hadn't even managed a shower before collapsing into his bed and giving in to sleep. Come morning, she'd snoozed her alarm so many times she'd barely had time to apply eyeliner and mascara. There certainly hadn't been a chance to hide the shadows beneath her eyes, and she looked no better now, with a day of harried classes and fervent excuses to professors under her belt.

And yet, there Kurama sat. Observing her like she rivaled some exhibit in a fine art museum—and maybe, also, an exhibit meant for a place not nearly so decent.

Giving up on intimidation, she joined him atop the bed, mimicking his cross-legged pose, her kneecaps kissing his. "It's highly unfair that you're so _good_ at that look."

"I'm afraid I remain unaware of what look—"

She thwapped him with a discarded pillow before he could continue, and his eyes popped wide as a spark of lime green zagged across his Loom. "I'm not falling for it. The ship sailed on you being this obtuse half a year ago. You know precisely what you're doing."

"Which is what, exactly?"

He'd run her in this circle all night—she knew he would. And she knew _why_ he would, too.

Hugging his pillow to her chest, she propped her chin atop it. "You want me to stay over, and you're trying to lure me in. And I will stay. Soon. Promise. Just not tonight."

That assurance didn't prove enough to dull his coy intentions. Flirtatious lilac hedged into his threads. "I seem to remember talk of wanting to stay in a boyfriend's apartment without fear as a driving factor. Why not begin now?"

"I did! Yesterday." Leaning forward, she tapped a finger to his temple. "Have you been concussed? Your memory is failing you."

He turned his head into her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. "You're no more obtuse than I am. You know yesterday didn't count for anything. Through no fault of yours, you were asleep before Yusuke even finished sieging the bathroom."

Fireworks popped in her chest as he lips brushed across his palm again, and she fought to keep her words straight. "Fair. But I promise I'll stay over soon. Better yet, you could come to my place. It's just… the thought of my own bed right now? You can't really ask me to turn that down, can you?"

"I can, and I have, and I would again," he said, a resigned smile cracking his mask at last, "but I know when to accept the answer I'm given."

"Thank you," she whispered, unable to break eye contact as his kisses drifted downward, brushing the heel of her hand and then the delicate underside of her wrist. "Maybe you could come over tomorrow? We could have dinner, and _I_ could clear _you_ a drawer, and we wouldn't have to worry about—"

The door flung open, whipping into her suitcase and sending it tumbling.

"—interruptions," Michi finished.

Cobalt amusement rippled through Kurama's Loom, though it did little to dampen the plum hewn deep in his threads.

"Hey, lovebirds!" Yusuke said, then paused, muttering under his breath, "Or lovefoxes? Nah. That's dumb." He thrust a finger toward them. "Up, Weaver! Get your ass on the couch. If you think you can just scamper out of here without a tournament to decide the best brawler, you're sorely mistaken. If there isn't a controller in your hands in the next five minutes, I don't care if you weave me into knots, I'll still kick your butt. You, too, foxboy. Let's move."

Michi clambered to her feet about as gracefully as a newborn foal, still buzzing from her fingers to the tips of her toes, Kurama's careful kisses burning like brands on her hand. "Since when are you calling me Weaver?"

Yusuke grinned like a wicked imp. "Look, if a name fits, I gotta use it."

"Meanwhile, the best you can manage for me is 'foxboy?'" Kurama asked dryly, getting to his feet in Michi's wake.

"If you want me to go with 'lovefox,' I can. That's the best I can offer." Matching his mischievous grin, Yusuke's threads buzzed with electric teal and crisp cobalt, and he took off, thundering down the hall, shouting, "Kuwabara, you better have that shit ready. It's ass kicking time for Yusuke Urameshi."

"As in, your ass is getting kicked? Because Michi's going to— Ow! Damn it, Urameshi!"

Ignoring the commotion in the living room, Michi turned back to Kurama. "So tomorrow? My place?"

His fingers slipped into her hair, tucking a lock behind her ear and trailing down her cheek. The plum in his Loom promised he'd much rather join her tonight, but he nodded, lavender affection swirling up to overtake the darker shades of purple. "Sure, Michi. Tomorrow it is."

* * *

Kurama met Michi at the edge of campus on Tuesday in a gray windbreaker with a black cashmere sweater beneath. It was a sweater she knew well—dating all the way back to the night they'd spent together in Mushiyori's botanical gardens. Back then, she hadn't known what hid beneath, the planes of hard muscle and healed scars that revealed Kurama's true talents, but she'd been just as awed by it then as she was now.

Truly, it wasn't fair how he could be so effortlessly handsome in something so inordinately casual.

Waving to Runa, they descended into the subway tunnels, but rather than riding the short trip to her apartment, they hopped aboard the train heading the opposite way—out to Sarayashiki, and the ramen stand that waited them there.

Everyone else had arrived by the time Michi and Kurama emerged from the subway. They were five feet out when Keiko leapt from her stool to wrap Michi in a crushing hug. Michi reciprocated, arms threading around Keiko's waist, laughing as Keiko squeezed for dear life. Then she was passed to Yukina for a lighter—chillier—embrace. Shizuru was next, the older girl slinging an arm around Michi's shoulders and toasting her with an imaginary beer.

Grinning like a wicked thing, Yusuke served up a batch of steaming gyoza, and Michi grabbed disposable chopsticks, slotting onto the seat between Yukina and Keiko, hip to hip with the other girls. Leaning across the ramen cart's counter, Kuwabara speared a dumpling and stuffed it in his mouth in a single bite, heedless of manners in all respects.

With easy grace, Kurama took up residence beside Hiei, his head angling toward the shorter demon as he asked about the transplants who'd been returned home in the last few days. Michi lost track of Hiei's answer, too caught up in laughter at Kuwabara as he choked on his hastily chewed gyoza.

Looms in every shade of blue bloomed around her, an ocean of happiness and amusement and steady companionship that drowned out all else on that tiny side street in Sarayashiki. Before them, the night stretched long, full of peace well-earned.

More work waited on the horizon. More Looms to mend. More transplants to resituate in homes across the country. But right then—in that moment amongst her newfound family—Michi didn't care about what lay along the next fork in the road. All that mattered was the booming bark of Yusuke's laughter, the press of Keiko's shoulder to hers, and the fireworks that sparked in her chest each time her gaze caught Kurama's in passing.

Six years ago, she never would've imagined this night, this family, this choice to embrace her territory and all that meant. Even just six months ago, she'd been woefully lost, swimming against a current as strong and vicious as a riptide, clinging to every breath she managed to gulp into her lungs.

Now, here she sat.

And she knew, as surely as if she could see it writ across the Loom of Life, that this was right.

This was how her life was supposed to be.

More than that, it was the life she wanted.

Maybe forever. Maybe just for right now. It didn't matter. Either way, it was perfect, sitting there in the halo of the streetlights, laughing with friends who'd tangled themselves deep in the nooks of her soul.

It was right.

And it was hers.

* * *

Moonlight painted the streets in silver as Michi and Kurama wound their way home.

She laced her fingers laced through his and leaned into him, sleepy with the sort of contentedness born from a night of good company and too much laughter. "Thank you," she murmured into the quiet.

"For?"

She lifted their hands, gesturing back the way they'd come. "Bringing them into my life."

His chuckle brought her back to the day so many months ago when he'd first called her to move their first date. Through the phone, that ringing note had been enough to give her shivers. In person, even having heard it so very many times, it still set her nerves on fire.

"I suspect," he said, "you'd have met them all with or without me. Chikuma would've seen to that. For that matter, even had we not ridden the same train last fall, we may very well have crossed paths come winter."

"Because of the halfway house?"

He nodded.

"Meaning what? That this was destined? That _we_ were destined?"

Curious contemplation suffused his Loom in familiar green, the shade somehow brighter when backlit by moonlight. After careful consideration, he voiced his conclusion, speaking with deft purpose. "I can't say I believe in the notion of destiny, but perhaps there are pieces of the Loom of Life none of us understand—that we aren't meant to understand. What I do know, Michi, is that I'm glad you rode that train with me in the fall."

They reached her stoop, but he didn't climb immediately, and she turned, peering up at him in the golden light. His free hand rose to her cheek, his thumb skimming along her jawline.

"More than that," he said with fervent surety, "I'm thankful we met as we did. Not because I wouldn't have chosen you had I known of your territory, but because I fear you might have chosen me." She shook her head, words rising on her tongue, but his thumb darted to her lips, keeping them still as he finished, "Selfish of me, I know. But it's the truth. And you deserve to know it."

Pinpricks stung in her eyes, and she blinked them away, kissing the calloused pad of his thumb. "You're wrong, Kurama."

For once, he truly was. More so than he could possibly know, and her heart ached to think he might not realize that.

Now he was the one who looked to protest, but she stopped him, rising onto her toes and stealing a kiss before he could speak. In his moment of breathless surprise that followed, she said, "Yes, I adored Shuichi—but I _love_ you. As Kurama. More than I ever could've loved you as Shuichi. There are so many pieces of me you'd never have understood if you were only the man I'd thought Shuichi to be. And if you're right, if we would've met without the train, I would've been drawn to you, just as I was then, whether I'd known what you were or not."

Another kiss quieted her, though this time, she wasn't sure who'd stolen it.

Had it been him, his Loom shining with impossible indigo? Or had it been her, her chest fit to burst with the aching certainty of her words and her need for him to understand them?

Against his lips, she whispered, "I would always be drawn to you."

A third kiss lasted only seconds before the indecency of it pulled them apart, their shared respect for proper time and place driving them up the steps and inside, then up more stairs and fumbling past her door. But as soon as the latch clicked home, he caught her again, one hand at the small of her back, the other tracing along her jaw.

Her world shrank down to him, to his chest pressed to hers, to his biceps beneath her hands, to his cashmere sweater bunching beneath her fingers. To the firm warmth of his lips and preternatural grace of his movements. To glimpses of his emerald gaze as they drifted through her apartment, heading to her room and what waited them there.

All the while, she felt it—the knowledge that she hadn't said all there was to say, that she hadn't strung together the proper words quite yet.

But she would.

* * *

Hours later, they lay side by side in the dark.

His Loom granted the room its only light. The faded plum of sated desire. The luminous aquamarine of contentment. The lively teal of happiness. All in his signature hues, pale and ephemeral.

And lastly, bright and entirely pure—indigo.

Always these days—indigo.

She said it then, those words she'd said once already but so desperately needed to say again.

"I love you, Kurama."

For a breath, silence lingered. The quiet instilled in her no fear, no terror that he might not reciprocate. With his Loom painted above her like a galaxy, she knew no rejection lay ahead.

He was simply marveling. Reveling in that precious, simple moment.

When his answer came, it rode a wave of indigo.

* * *

News of Chikuma's fate arrived on Wednesday.

It was Asato who called Michi. She was between classes, sitting on a bench at the edge of campus, getting ahead on readings in the spare moment before her next lecture. On the second ring, she dug her phone from her bag and picked up, keeping her place in the book with one finger as she flipped the cover closed.

Asato wasted no time on small talk. Just cut straight to it.

"They let Chikuma choose."

Michi's finger slipped from between the pages. "What does that mean?"

"Spirit World decided to offer her two options. Return here without her powers and help you weave our transplants back together, which… well, I'm not even sure that is an option, considering how you described stitching Taki up. But that's not really the point. She didn't choose it, so the particulars are irrelevant."

Michi hardly dared breathe. "What… what did she choose?"

"Option two. A year of solitude in Spirit World. Spent entirely alone, as nothing but a spirit without a home. After that, eternity with Toshiki."

Death.

Chikuma had chosen death.

"They've already seen to her grave," Asato said, a hitch in his voice. "Apparently, she stipulated that as a condition. A plot next to her son's."

"And they did it just like that? In what? Mere hours?"

"Guess so. She didn't have any family left, right? Just a dead son and a dissolved marriage. Probably not hard for Spirit World to pull strings at a graveyard."

Maybe. Michi didn't know.

Those weren't the logistics that settled beneath her skin, awkward and disconcerting.

Was it that easy? To be alive one moment, then dead and buried the next? So fast? So finite and concrete?

She didn't remember saying goodbye to Asato, but she recalled the question she asked before she hung up—the address she requested. For long minutes after, she hesitated, her phone in her hand, the homescreen staring up at her, its clock ticking toward her next class.

Then she stood, packed her bag, and walked off campus.

Her route took her to the subway, following the line to Mushiyori's outskirts. Through a district with a seamstress's shop gone out of business and reopened as a hair salon, ownership entirely changed. Past a condemned factory where a young boy had died of mysterious causes. Out to a cemetery.

She didn't know where the Nakasawas' plots lay, but a force she couldn't name drew her on, and she followed its will, numb to the forlorn beauty around her. The gravestones stretched in neat rows, some adorned with flowers, others with wreaths. But most were empty. Unattended.

Forgotten.

Maybe it was the Loom that stopped her. Or maybe it was merely luck. But when the exhausting weight of Asato's news at last hit her in full, she drew to a halt before a pair of twin markers, their slate gray faces carved with names Michi knew well.

 _Toshiki Nakasawa._

 _Chikuma Nakasawa._

No epitaph graced either stone. No flowers. No wreaths.

Heedless of the fresh churned dirt, Michi sank to her knees before them. Two lives snuffed out too early—one by accident, one by choice. Both gone, regardless.

There she remained for hours, kneeling in the loose loam, silent and unmoving until her phone buzzed. Runa, probably, and though Michi didn't answer, she rose stiffly, stepping back from the graves. These lives were not hers to honor, not hers to mourn. But she'd had to see them—had to witness this choice of Chikuma's. This final act of her life.

Now she'd done that, and as wordless as she'd come, she turned to go, knowing she'd never return here. That perhaps no one would ever come back to this simple, barren site. But she knew, too, that Chikuma had known that. She'd chosen as much.

In truth, Michi suspected it hadn't been a choice at all.

After all, this path would take her to Toshiki.

For Chikuma, no one else was necessary.

* * *

On Friday, Kurama arrived at Michi's apartment fifteen minutes prior to the time Michi had set Runa. As promised, he'd picked up an order of udon from Yusuke so fresh and perfect that Michi's mouth watered within moments of Kurama stepping inside. Despite the roiling knot of nerves in her gut, Yusuke's cooking never failed to please.

If only baring her soul to Runa could be as simple as ordering crowd-pleasing takeout...

How simple life would be in such a world.

Too bad nothing about her territory was ever that easy.

Kurama made no move to carry on conversation as Michi prepped the living room, setting out dishes and utensils atop her coffee table, and he waited until she patted the cushion at her side to join her on the couch. Smiling bracingly, he squeezed her knee. "Can I make this easier on you? I could stay, if that—"

"No. I appreciate the offer, but no." She breathed in deep, her chest rising and falling raggedly at first, then less so with each new inhale. "This is Runa. My Runa. I can tell her. Goodness, I should've told her years ago."

"If you're sure."

"I am."

Wasn't she?

"I'll keep it vague about you. About why you're both Shuichi _and_ Kurama, but I want to tell her that you _are_ both. Best I can, I want my side of the story to be complete." The faintest smile curled her lips at the corner. "I'm tired of hiding pieces of myself from Runa. I want it all out there."

He pressed a kiss to her temple, then stood. "I trust your judgment. Tell her whatever you need to."

He was halfway to the door when the knock came. With a final breath, deep enough to fill her lungs entirely, Michi rose and followed him. He offered her one last smile as she twisted the knob. The door swung inward—and there was Runa, her head tilting in surprise as the sight of Kurama, Loom shooting through with lime.

"Didn't realize you'd be joining us," she said, no hint of hurt in her voice, her curiosity merely piqued.

"I'm not." His smile broadened, full of the charm that had pulled Michi to him all those months ago. He gestured Runa inside, then swapped places with her, shifting into the hall. "It was good to see you. The three of us will need to do dinner sometime soon. Enjoy tonight." His gaze flitted to Michi, bright as the underbelly of a leaf. "Love you."

Then he was gone, striding for the stairs.

Michi closed the door in his wake.

"Love?" Runa asked. "Already?" She mimed checking a watch. "Didn't I get the boyfriend news two weeks ago? You moving fast or…"

Laughing ruefully, Michi looped an arm through Runa's. "Impatient, huh? It's all part of the story, trust me."

"Yeah? You ready to start talking?"

In unison, they sank onto the couch, and as Runa dug into the steaming containers of udon unbidden, Michi pulled a pillow into her lap. She hugged it to her chest, studying Runa, drinking in the silken length of her ponytail, the upturn of her rounded jaw, the unworried warmth in her eyes—the familiar, wonderful shades of her Loom.

Kurama's statement from minutes before echoed in her ears.

 _If you're sure_.

And suddenly, surprisingly, she _was_ sure. Right then, with the moment finally upon her, the fear that had dogged her that week fell away, fading to nothingness. Truthfully, it was just as she'd said. This was Runa. _Of course_ , she could tell Runa.

At long last, she knew who she was. But to make it real, to make it a truth that could never be taken from her, those she held most dear had to know, too. _Runa. Nanako. Yurie._ Each of them needed to understand, needed to see her as she saw herself.

For she was Michi Kuroki, the Weaver—and goodness, how she loved the sound of that.

THE END

* * *

AN: And so it ends, my friends.

Despite finishing this chapter a week ago, the fact that it's over hasn't really sunk in yet, I don't think. Perhaps it will once I switch this story's status to complete. I'm not sure. All I do know is that it's going to be weird not to write about Michi anymore. This is the longest story I've ever written. None of my original novels nor other fanfics have even lived in the same stratosphere as BBL in terms of length. It's a strange sensation to know it's come to a close.

That said, I'm excited to move on to other things. I've got a Shizuru/Kazuma oneshot I'll post before the end of April (as part of the Rare YYH Fanfic Contest being run on Tumblr). After that, I'll be returning to my YusukeOC fic 'The Unknown Grounds.' For those of you not reading that yet, the first ten chapters are up already!

Before I can start back on TUG in earnest, though, I need to crank out revisions for one of my novels. My agent has been waiting months already, and it's truly time I get focused. To that end, I'm thinking I'll start up regular posts of TUG again sometime in June (with the first Friday of July as the absolute latest the chapter will go up). I adore TUG, and I've yet to leave a fanfic unfinished, so trust me when I say I'll be returning to it. I've just come to understand that I'm much more productive when focused on one project rather than splitting my creativity between multiple.

I hope to see many of you there for TUG! But regardless of if I do or not, thank you endlessly for reading 'Blinded By Light.' This story was a joy—in no small part thanks to all of you. Since I won't be able to post a thanks to every reviewer in the next chapter, I hope you all know how much I love having the chance to write for you. (And I'm going to do my best to respond to all the reviewers for this chapter, because you deserve to personally know how much you mean to me! Though if you don't a want response, feel free to let me know not to write back.)

Big heaps of adoration to those of you who reviewed last week. Thanks for bringing this story over 500 reviews! Love to you all: MissIdeophobia, Laina Inverse, Kado-Kattsune, o-dragon, Kasumi Uchiha, Sidako, xxhikagexx, Starsxwonder, Shell1331, and roseeyes.

And that's a wrap.

(I think it finally just set in.

Bye, Meech. Love you, girly.)


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